The Truth in Green

Today I went running down a street near my house.  I had been this way before, but it was months ago.  The first time I ran down this road I passed a field.  It was filled with beautiful long green grass and one of my favorite's, Queen Anne's Lace.  The first time I came to this field, I stopped walked in and cried out to God to heal my hurts.

Today, when I ran by this field there was no more Queen Anne's Lace, no more green, and not even the grasshoppers that were once jumping all around me.  As I ran past today, God helped me to realize something.  In the way that this field's beautiful flowers have to all die out to grow and become beautiful again so do the stages of our lives.  Sometimes we have to experience a drying out period where things are raw and vibrancy is gone.  But, just as the flowers bloom every spring so do all things happy and beautiful return to us. 

Just as we trust that in winter flowers die and in spring they grow up again, so must we trust that there will be times when things seem bad, but from them we will grow.

Beginning my Journey..

My mother has always told me that if she could teach me just one thing, it would to relax. "Since you were a baby," she says, "You would never just calm down and relax." For most of my life I have laughed this off as another retold childhood story, but today sparked a revelation. There is something to life that one experiences in calm, and I am missing out.


This understanding came to me tonight after a much stressful trip home ,which ended in a drive through the worst storm I have ever experienced from a car. My courageous fiancé drove us through the lightning and sheets of rain as I cowered, petrified and tense, into his arm praying for safe passage. When the storm was finally over, I sat in the passenger seat motionless and staring forward just waiting for my muscles to relax. "What's the matter baby, the storm's over. We're ok!" Joe says to me, but it still takes 10 minutes for words to form again.

People always talk of the calm before the storm and the calm after the storm, and I feel that is just what my life entails. My moments of calm are ones spent anticipating the storm.

Why do I fret so much? Why do I become tense and panicky when others stay calm? Why do I feel that moments doing nothing are moments wasted? Why has my mother never been able to teach me to relax?
The answer I have come to is this: I am not trusting the Lord to take care of my life and in my mistaken effort to control all things around me I leave no room for God.


So, I have decided to begin a journey, a journey which will take a lifetime but will ultimately end in the calm of my God's loving arms. My journey will be a hard one and I know I will fail much, but if I seek calm then I am seeking and trusting the Lord who is the only one who can control the chaos I create.