Spring

Barefoot Peaches

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With knees pulled in close I watched the rain linger on my peach tree branches like diamonds gracing ear lobes. They hung until they were too heavy, held too much and then fell. One by one they went.

Tink. Plink-tink. 

It became a song the likes of Disney could form into a magical illusion. I saw Fantasia. It was creepy. But the way of rain is my tune. A beat of the gutter, percussion on the patio. It was all very romantic save for the permeating smell of trash. Sidenote: why do ripe strawberries and melons stink of garbage? Anyone? Bueller?

***
I want peaches so badly. When I drove home a few years ago with the fresh purchase, peachy tree roots swaddled like a promise, I had visions of overflowing bushels of fruit I’d carry into the house each August. I wanted to brag about my bare feet and sweet bounty. Make jam and stuff.
Yeah, not a single bloom in three years. Because Colorado thinks snow on Mother’s Day is one wild prank. It is, my friends.

Last spring I coerced my husband into wrapping our bushes. We wove frost-resistant tarp around our lilacs and I dug up my lettuce seedlings. It is so much stinking work to garden in this climate. I swear I fret more over a half-inch plant than I do my children’s souls. OK, that’s going a smidgen far. My point is I stress plenty over those stupid things.

The storm crescendoed only to steady again. I’d seen the forecast for the weekend: worst blizzard in decades (my interpretation).
Familiar angst started to rise. I began to make mental checklists of supplies, materials, and gallons of milk.

Until I didn’t.

What if I decide stillness? How will this play out if I drop my shoulders and travel the way of trust? 

Not only did the snow come it sifted all night, weighing heavy on limbs and leaves, breaking branches and giving me a stomachache. An inch would have been plenty but no, we got six for pity’s sake. 

Morning dawned like a war zone. Flowers bent low and trees were pinned to the ground. And a knowing started to invade my heart when I looked at the trees, their trunks still sturdy.

Storms can leave us battered and bruised, but when we trust we are held in every outcome they don’t uproot us.

“A bruised reed He will not break, and a smoldering wick He will not snuff out. In faithfulness He will bring forth justice.”  -Isaiah 42:3, NIV

What About Birds?

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A bird person I am not. At all.

Theirs is the only exhibit I skip when at the zoo. The Big Year, with some of my favorite actors, left me dumbfounded. I’m sincerely curious when I ask, “What is the draw? I’m just not seeing it.”

There are at least a handful of them, brown with strategic spots like a domino, in my vision from my spot on my patio. I’m scooping together a little lettuce, a bit of strawberry and Feta, some almonds while they are as settled as a toddler. So, not settled. They flit and they flutter, to and fro, and I’m tired trying to follow them. One of them does that creepy thing birds do where they turn their heads like a cap on a bottle. No neck, just a beak reaching much farther than seems natural to do.

One of them hops between the dime-shaped leaves of our Aspen. The branch keeps a sway long after the initial impact and I wonder if this is their version of a trampoline. Another jumps in, but on a different branch. Soon they are intermittently scattered, just enough distance to claim their space, just enough intimacy to be a unit.

That’s when I hear the bird on the highest branch start screeching, and remember why I don’t really like this species. I scrunch my nose at the sound and pretend that she’s a plump southern belle with a wooden spoon and a whole lotta sass. With her eyes on the side of her head she’s punching that beak here and there giving what-for’s to the others. Or maybe it was a male saying, Hey, back yo-self up off my lady friend.

I’m probably wrong in every way since remember, I don’t care enough to know these habits. But I breathe deep the fresh cut grass and let the wind move my hair across my neck. I settle for all of us because my children run circles around me like my new feathered friends. The screeching is too much, the constant movement more than I can pace.

I drag my eyes down to read, take in something other than the air of rivalry.

“…but we also exult in our tribulations…”   – Romans 5

We do? Actually, most of the time I sound more like my three-year old when she looks at me out the top of her eyes and says, “Everyone’s being mean to me and I don’t love it.” I tend to order another coffee and sink into that dark place in my mind that throws parties. The pity kind.

The sun comes through the rainbow umbrella above, and I read the words again.

This morning when tears streamed angry down my daughter’s face, I was not exulting. When my son lay on the floor and ignored my order to get ready for school, I was not exulting. When my little one screamed her way up every, single stair to her bedroom last night, I was not exulting.

“How?” I ask Him.

And I feel His response in every part of me that begins to relax. “I will take care of the ‘how.’ You only need to think about the ‘where.'”

I rest, because I know my direction now. And it is enough.

 

That restless energy is for the birds.