Seed Upon Seed (Futures Past)
I have mentioned this elsewhere a time or two, but there is still much truth to the notion that God exists in the roundness of things. That is to say, God exists in a steadfast position as we orbit through the outer and inner spaces of our existence. God will be there, holding the line for us all, should we choose to look for it, feel it, grope for it, or even find ourselves choking against it in a harsh current–God's position in all things is one of steadfast love. Love in all senses of the word.
I am saying all of this because I am sitting in a place, a park, on a bench, writing as I look onward toward the green-space, where my kids and my dogs played, once upon a time.
I can still feel the cool air. I can feel the soft grass. I can see my dogs running. I can hear my children playing. Its sort of like watching ghosts, or reruns, but its more than that to me. It's the years that laid the foundation for all that is now. At this future-tense. Me, moving ahead in order to look back. It is almost like time-travel.
Directly across the way, over the brook and up the side of a wall, you will see The Purple House, still purple, in parts.
The room where I talked my way out of complete mental ruination is now torn away and tossed. Only a sheer drop to the rocks below remains. So, in other words? Nothing has changed then? Ha.
Also, on my 31st birthday, on an overwhelmingly warm November Day, I came to this park and sat on that rock and that rock is still there in its original form, unlike my dogs and my children.
I remember feeling a very bitter sense of despair. Bitter. So very lonely and cold. Sad and out of place. My child told me once that all I do is sulk. I wish it were so simple; to sulk.
I would not call my ways a form of sulking, but bearing up against an invisible chain mail of grief cast in the densest of iron, invisible to the naked eye.
And I felt so trapped. These days, as I sit here alone. of all the other things I now feel, trapped isn't one of them. So I can't say things have not gotten better because in so many vital ways, they have.
As much as some parts of me hurt so badly other deeper, more integral parts of me feel like a sculpture of sorts, glazed smooth and whole, strong and resilient–made right. So, it could be said; the Great Heavenly Sculptor reached down inside my soul and molded and shaped all the broken parts and forged them in the sacred Refiner's Fire, burning away all impurities that had polluted my ability to experience the full love of God because God blew the bellows of change, poured veritable rivers, torrents, and cataracts of water over my soul and blessed it all with numerous rains and multitudes of rainbows, endless starlit skies, flowers, eternal songs from birds and many other things. God held this space, for me, quite literally, and carved out a pathway covered in tiny pebbles, in a circular pattern and then surrounded it in hundreds of varieties of plants, shrubs, and trees, not to mention grasses and stones.
This space was held for me back then and my future me, now. The moments of apprehension, joy, the moments of indescribable grief and the countless hours I spent managing the weight of my invisible armour of grief, he held this space for me. He suspended it in time, even as the world evolves. The plants grow, the population swells, the politics divide and unite, and the universe continues to expand. Even so, he held this space for me. Maybe for us all, if anyone else out there is willing to see the things I can see and feel the things I can feel.
But even if I am the only one able to comprehend all this vastness, nevertheless, it touches us all at least now and then, despite man's collective stubbornness.
As I look around, all I see is an abundance of beauty. So much beauty. I swear at times, my sandalled feet are treading on the Holiest of grounds, perhaps grounds of paradise itself, somehow, someway. Somehow this all feels like a glimpse of paradise, to me.
I often wonder if I did in fact die, somewhere along the way, and now am just a happy spectre, not reaching for more, but allowing more to come to me as this new consciousness gels with my sense of reality. I feel no urge to fight against the current, but this was not always the case. I used to be labelled as restless. More recently, I am often compared to a ghost. Silent and shifty. Will I ever see my family again?
There are questions I am unable to answer, but moments of calm find me still, the winds that blow remind me of where I came from and all that brought me here.
How many signs of warning, foreboding, etc. etc. shadowed us as we went about our daily lives? I doubt anyone else remembers, but I remember. I know the hours sometimes felt like years and I felt like a very small vessel stranded on a wildly calm sea–too unchanging to be natural. I would dream over and over of our house shrouded in fog or hemmed in by deep ditches and steep hills. Something was always hiding and hindering. Hiding and hindering.
Sometimes there would be clouds. Sometimes there would be crowds of people. But never once did my children's faces appear to me in my dreams. I have sequestered them safely out of my mind's eye even as I hide them in my heart. Something was out there, seeking them. Something...
But this space? It tells me that God is still sovereign in my life and all things work together for good. As a prophet trusts God, I also trust... I will. I will.
All is as it should be and I believe these last few years will represent a ploughing of the field, my future life, time and deliberate patience, planting and looking ahead to harvest. Seeds upon seeds.
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