Where once I looked for a God somewhere in the unknown mist, I now look within to find the places I have resisted love, resisted my good. Now I look for memories of guilt and unworthiness and weed them out to make room for flowers to bloom.
It seems like yesterday and so long ago when I walked along a dusty road, listening for frogs, and felt the voice of Jesus talking to me, promising I would never be alone. I said I will follow you if you will just show me how to make this world a happier place for everyone.
I hated the sadness, the hurt, the anger. Our house was so full of fear. I see now it was fear though then I felt it was me creating all of the pain. Once again I see as I look through the looking glass, it was I, who as my experience, was the pain. I was the sadness. I was the fear. I had chosen this family for these lessons, for these moments of knowing life was not supposed to hurt like this.
Through an underlying current of love, I could not break the glass keeping us apart, so instead I let my heart break a little each day. It seemed that walk was just an illusion, a dream to ease just for a moment in time.
I still feel the joy as the frogs welcomed me to their world that warm summers night. I think of how often the memory held me up, kept me strong. I think of how often the memory made me more angry because I felt deserted, rejected, mocked for my innocent belief in something better, something magical.
I walked that road so many nights. Each time the frogs called out to me. Often butterflies joined me, teasing me to follow them into the fields, to see through their eyes. Yet I was not to hear the comforting voice again, for many years. Many tears were shed, yet here was still the comfort I sought. I desperately tried to feel that voice again.
But in the garden, on a nature walk, camping with family, there I could find peace, feel my place in life. Here I was free, still waiting for the voice to comfort me, yet feeling solace there. Perhaps I was not alone, perhaps no reason to feel so lost. Here was the happiness promised me, though fleeting as I returned to a world where people could not be made happy. What good was I to this world, if all I brought was disappointment and despair?
For years I rode the merry-go-round feeling a connection, feeling lost, knowing abundance, suffering loss. For years I thought I had found the mystery, only to find no clarity, no consistency. My daily intention to make the world a better place, to give a person a smile, security, love, seemed a losing battle. While for many days and often weeks I felt progress, it was only to follow with as much time feeling I had failed. Each time picking up the pieces, nevertheless when I felt like giving up there was a pressure inside of me so strong, I felt I might blow up before the world, leaving tiny bits of me strewn across the country side like leaves on a tree in fall.
I watched as leaves were carried from a tree and whipped across the sky and wondered how they must feel to be wrenched from their source. Is that what was scaring me - that I had been pulled from my Source with no way back. Each time I sat in quiet answers were given, but then I did not listen with my proper ears, or with my heart. Thoughts were just thoughts. No meaning then. But now........
And then the dream shattered my world, brought me to my senses. A dream that made my senses come fully alive.
Each time now when I go to a garden, take a nature walk or listen to the rain, I feel the voice. I hear a song I so often heard as a child. It is comfort. It is strength. It is faith. It is love.
The tears falling as I write this are of joy, knowing I have never been alone and forever and eternity, I will be carried by the greatest love this world will ever know. It was me all along, and now I know it must be me first, I carry my happiness with gratitude. A world cannot be made happy unless those in the world choose to be happy. With a sigh of relief I can share with all, knowing they are in charge of their own destiny and we all have the same gift within when we are ready to go to the garden alone.
If you are drawn to the garden, here is the song to which I dedicate this post, as well as to my mother and Aunty Clara, who taught me the joy found in flowers, and strawberry beds. In loving memory of my father, whose faith I only now understand, I feature his beloved Hansa roses in the photo. Another reason I chose this family was to learn how close we really are to our Source. We are not like the trees whose leaves are torn from it's branches each fall. We are as strong as held as tightly as the pine trees that grew in the front yard, needles that are held season after season.
https://youtu.be/9aIhta9exts
Always know you are never alone. There is one who walks with you always.
