Little Leaf
It’s a bitter cold, snow covered, Saturday morning. My 5-year old son bounces out of bed at 6:30am. “It’s Saturday!!” he exclaims. I will myself out of a bed that used to hold two, put on my cozy robe, and we jump in the car - pajamas and all. I drop him off 10 minutes away at his dad’s apartment.
As I drive home, I thank God for this weekly dose of quiet. My brain is still waking up. I try not to check my phone or listen to anything on the radio before I’ve gotten home to brew coffee and read.
God seems the loudest on these mornings. He doesn’t compete with the weekly to do lists, the noise, and the distracted thoughts. His presence is in the quiet. The pondering. The Words on the page.
It’s mid-January in upstate New York and the snow is falling softly, slowly. Mysteriously, the tree that I can see outside of our picture window still has some small rust colored leaves attached. They are small, and I watch them shivering in the cold. I consider bringing one in. Consider saving it. I find myself personifying the leaf. My mind wanders next to people in our city that are homeless. The face of a homeless woman that attends our church pops into my mind. I pray that she is safe and warm. I thank God for my home, where I’m cuddled under a blanket, and for his provision.
____
My thoughts go back to the leaf. Leaves don’t feel. They don’t have souls. But scripture does say they the trees groan for His return. I’ve groaned for His return. I know that ache intimately.
I have warmed myself by the light of scripture when my insides have felt cold and dead.
I metaphorically came back to life in the spring of my soul when God wooed me back. I know that trees don't have souls but they illustrate the seasons my life has taken.
I once prayed, God I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I don’t recognize myself. Please help me to love, and be kind. I don’t want unforgiveness to be the identity of our home.
I was angry. At God. My marriage. My husband. My life. The effort to fix it, with no results. My heart was shriveling up, and shivering in the cold wind.
There was a season that I tried to run from the still small voice of the Holy Spirit. I wanted to believe that God didn’t exist so that I could live however I wanted. I wanted to retaliate for the way I had been treated. To find any way out of my circumstances.
The bitterness consumed me. For 7 years, I had tried to hold on to hope, and look for each next right step or solution. My outlook and attitude remained optimistic amidst a very broken marriage. But now, the steps were all taken. The solutions were not working. I remember the winter that I broke. My hair thinned, I gained weight, I couldn’t bring myself to do simple tasks without melting down. Or if I did, I had to expend an enormous amount of energy. Normally very independent, my mom cleaned my house for months. Circumstantial anxiety and depression became a part of my vocabulary. All the while, I pushed God to the fringes.
It felt as though He had failed me. I had already worked the steps that scripture and Christians recommended to me, and my marriage was no better off. Week after week, I confessed my sinful attitude to friends in Bible study, and skeptically prayed that God would move. What I meant was that He’d fix my marriage. But He answered my prayer in a way I did not expect.
I don’t know how else to describe what happened next except that the Lord’s loving-kindness and forever love, somehow, slowly, brought me back to Himself.
____
At a women's retreat, I was gifted a book on Sabbath rest.
I cleared my calendar of everything extracurricular. If it wasn’t God, Bible study, work, or family, I didn’t do it. I had awkward conversations with friends:
You see, I’d love to come to your birthday party, and I’m technically free, but I’m in a hard season, and I’m taking everything off of my calendar at the moment.
Then I committed to get out in the sun every day that it was shining. My journal and prayer life was the richest it had ever been. God met me in my grief and healed me through his Word and prayer. At the time it didn’t feel like healing, or answered prayer. It wasn’t magic. But looking back, I can see the small ways He pursued me.
It probably seems like I’m oversimplifying, or making this about self care.
He used routine and minuscule rhythms to point my longing heart to Him. I could have just as easily made different choices. Left my marriage in anger. Had an affair. Left the faith. I don’t know why He chose to bring me back, but He did. And it will always be a time in my life that I remember how faithful He is, and I’ll continue to hold it as a candle in the dark, when I can’t see the future ahead.
My marriage ultimately did end in divorce. But the King with the words of eternal life picked me off of that tree - blowing in the wind, and brought me inside. Safe and warm. Held and pursued. Seen and loved.
