Faith

I look at these buds and think about faith. I've actually been thinking about faith a lot these days as I work through this re-entry stuff, which slams into me sometimes, knocking me flat.

There are times when I wonder if I'll ever feel better, if I'll ever just feel ho-hum, la-di-dah, rosy and light. My friend Jennifer, as I said, counsels living in the gap as a place that can be amusing. And Annie calls it "interesting." Ha. Amusing it is not. Interesting, perhaps, in a glimpse of clarity, perhaps, in a glimpse of, "this will pass" "this will go away" "you WILL get through this time." Mostly I do not feel interesting or amusing or anything other than slammed.

My friend Connie sent me some words from an author who, after rowing across the ocean, went through a time of deep introspection, a difficult re-entry. Today, talking to my friend the baker at the tailgate market, I heard about a friend of his who had an enormously difficult time after finishing hiking the Appalachian Trail. I keep thinking I'll wake up perky and chipper and I AM feeling better and more like myself, but there are times when I really do not.

So today, just now, I came home. I have to go back to work in a little bit to run a meeting, but I am home for a spell, a short bit. And there in my garden are these daisies. They are huge. A big fat bunch. Three times bigger than they were last season, or the season before, which is when I planted them. Right now that whole garden bed is green. Lush and lovely, to be sure, but all green. By next week it will be filled with color. White, in the case of these daisies, and pink for the Echinaceas. The Daylilies will pop out in orange. Who knows what else is in there. I plant things and then forget about them.

So when I planted them I didn't know what would happen. And now, here they are. Now here I am too. Seeds, plants, have been tucked in or shoved in, or, without my knowing it, snuck in. I do not know, right now, much of anything. But these plants remind me that something is growing, whether I can name it or not. And faith is trusting that.

So I shall try.

Things ARE happening. Just now more slowly. Now is the time to stop and let the revelations wash in, let the buds open - when they will.

Big deep breath.

Love,
Laurey