We Come Upon a Little Pond

I take a walk with a friend out in the country. Just around the bend from my house, you find nothing but farmland and ponds.

We pass a little house that used to be where folks cast their ballots in elections.

We come upon a little pond.

That's all. A walk out in the country, along a winding road, is what life is like here some days. Even at my age, I look for turtles and scan the banks for duck nests. I watch for minnows and muskrats. I can recognize the deep call of a bullfrog.

We walk and talk and promise to return later to see the geese with their goslings.

_______________________________

Warning: What Not to Do With Your Restless Heart

Every few years, I grow restless.

I begin to believe that a more exciting life exists in another town or in another career. My soul feels sick inside, and my imagination tells me I'm living the wrong life. My instincts tell me to beg my husband to take our family and flee. Everything in me believes something must change. 

This week, I hear the gentle admonition, Do not flee. Do not change.

I'm learning instead to settle deeper into my own soul. The restless heart isn't a cry for new and different; it's a longing for truth. It's a longing to go even further into the restlessness till you strike pure gold.

I'm not there yet. I write things in my journal about whether I'd stake my life on the truth that Jesus brings the life that is truly life; that you lose your life and find it; that you come to God and never thirst again; and that the restlessness is there to drive you to a different kind of vibrant living.

Yes. Yes, these things are true.

Do not flee. Go deeper in. 

I'm wandering the garden, and I see the stakes around my blueberry bush. I observe the impenetrable netting that keeps the birds away. The beautiful bush is trapped on all sides except one: beneath her. So she sends down roots so unimaginably strong. And within the cage, she produces the kind of fruit only possible here.

After all, these boundaries are protection. They exist to ensure her fruitfulness.

When I feel restless, I send down roots instead. I go deeper into the very soil I think holds me back, and I rejoice in the pleasant boundaries around my life.  

_______________________
Do you have restless years?

A Simple Pleasure in Your Home

Finally, the lilac bush blooms.

We bring some into the house, and already, the wafting fragrance greets anyone who enters. It's gentle, sweet, and calm.

I love thinking about the simple pleasure of it. I want to build more simple pleasures into my home environment: gentle, sweet, and calm things that waft about soothe and delight. Music, great smells of baking things, the swish of a cat around our ankles, the crinkle of a page turning in a book. . .

____________________
What's a simple pleasure in your home?