looking through me

Tag: nature

January 23, 2015

the morning sky

I walk outside and my eyes turn eastward. It’s an unconscious habit in the morning. My body heads to the car, but my spirit needs to check in with the sun.

Low on the horizon the clouds are infused with the most unnatural shade of orangey pink. Unnatural? How can the colors of the sky be unnatural? The sun and its rays breaking through the atmosphere is the epitome of natural.

I take every opportunity to check in on the eastern sky as I drive. In my rearview mirror I see the glowing orange orb peek over the indigo hills.

What is it about God’s economy that on the days I’m feeling the most depleted—when I’m feeling the weight in my chest of Grandma’s lungs fighting against her and the inability to help as a friend struggles with mental health issues—the richness of creation overwhelms my deficiencies? It slides in on sunbeams and reminds me my lack of control is as natural as the sunrise. I can’t fret loved ones to health or the sun into the sky.

Even as I try to write the image in my mind, to inscribe the beauty in words of remembrance, the sun keeps climbing. The colors change. The moment is gone. But the truth is not.

“This is the day that the LORD has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it” Psalm 118:24 (ESV).

 

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January 4, 2015

Red Rock Canyon

Too many days the walls inched closer and the oxygen level dropped to the point of fuzzy, frustrated thinking. I couldn’t do it.

I couldn’t face another day of throttling the urge to scream. I couldn’t bear the thought of putting in more hours at work only to have it chase me home and point out all the areas I was struggling to hang on.

There was no fight left in me. So I fled.

I made for the hills. Or at least the rocks. The red ones.

Somehow when life felt like a game of bowling with boulders—and I was one of the pins—escaping up to the desert canyons saved me. The quiet, the stillness, the colors, the sound of pebbles crunching underfoot and my own labored breathing reminded me I was alive. I was more than a job. I was more than failed intentions. I was more than a body going through motions and an internal critic screaming, “I don’t belong here.”

Surrounded by the enormity of nature I could gain perspective. Today would soon be yesterday. These rocks would remain. The frustrations threatening to overwhelm me faded in a landscape subsisting on the scarcest traces of water.

Away from the voices—mostly my own—questioning me, doubting me, demanding of me . . . and away from the Sisyphean tasks of teaching, I could breathe. My eyes could rest on beauty. My body could sweat out the stress and draw in new energy. My ears could hear peace and translate it for my soul.

No problems were solved. No epiphanies manifested before me. No circumstances changed. But the stillest of voices spoke through my senses: “In the refuge of the rock you are no more and no less safe than in the midst of your every day. I will never leave you.”

 

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