looking through me

Fruit casings drop from the Magnolia tree onto the roof and race across it in a tumbling, skittering dash. I trace the sound above me from east to west.

I watch dry leaves scrape and then dance along the street, pirouetting faster and faster as the edge of the wind curls them away from their branches.

The house creaks in the gusts, yet I watch the rose tree and not a single petal is lost.

The wind whistles, but what is healthy and attached—what is alive—bends without breaking. All else blows away.

And I wonder, what does the wind blow away in me? What has died and needs only a gust to break off and float free? What debris is dislodged from the crevices of my soul?

But then I wonder, what doesn’t blow away? What remains alive and growing—delicate as the iris petals still firmly connected—unfazed by the dry wind gusting through me?

The wind flips the roses’ glossy, dark green leaves and reveals duller, lighter undersides. The dark and light fluttering together in the stiff breeze is beautiful.

Is beauty exposed in me when a storm turns me inside out?

A butterfly drifts by at a leisurely speed that belies the strength of the air currents. A bee burrows into a rose. Birdsongs mingle on the fingers of the wind. Nature carries on unperturbed.

Life buffets me, and I pray I might be as steadfast as the flowers—bending but not breaking—turning my face to the Son in the stillness and the storm.