Beauty on the Backroads

Stories of grace for life's unexpected turns

beauty

Life, even when …

The path we walked through the woods felt different from the other paths we had walked. The trees were closer somehow, the underbrush lush and green, as far as the eye could see, full of fruit and flowers.

“What’s different about these woods?” I asked my husband. He had suggested this hike on Labor Day, and our more recent hikes at Gettysburg and through an almost-untouched wood in our county loomed fresh in my mind.

“It’s new growth,” he said, pointing out that the trees hadn’t grown tall enough to block the sun from the ground cover. Suddenly I could see the difference. I am awed by tall trees, the way they stretch to the sky but it was the beauty of the thick low-growing plants that caught my eye this time.

As we walked, we read the information signs. How this land was old and among the first to be settled in this part of the county. How it later became a landfill and now, through careful planning, a beautiful park.

We were literally walking through a garbage dump.

And it was beautiful.

—

Call it what you want: a dumpster fire, a garbage heap, a hot freaking mess. You don’t have to read or watch or scroll for long before you’re convinced that the world is trash and maybe a good scorching would do everyone good.

Five minutes on Twitter and I’m scared and worried and paranoid. I can’t keep up with all the tragedies, nor am I meant to. My soul can’t hold all the hurt, but sometimes I still want it to.

Even without the earthquakes and the hurricanes and the tragedies, I am spinning into a pit because there’s a hole in our kitchen ceiling, a mouse we can’t catch, bills we can’t pay, and frustrated tears during homework. It is 7:30 at night and I am D-O-N-E with it all. I want to curl up in bed, read a book to take me away from it all, or drink something to dull the pain. Maybe a combination of all three.

My personal vice is to flee, escape, give up when the trouble comes. When the going gets tough, I get going, as far from the tough-going as I can get. (I’ve heard the world might end this weekend. I don’t believe it, but at this exact moment I don’t think I would mind if it did.)

Still, as much as I want to give up on the world, to throw up my hands and scream, “How much longer?” and “What can I do?”, I can’t walk away. I can’t give up.

Because life finds a way to break through even the most trashy of circumstances. This is not naive idealism. It is true.

Photo by qinghill on Unsplash

Did you see the video of the man sacrificing the last generator in Florida before Irma to a woman who needed it for an oxygen tank? I cried. Or if you’re on Twitter, go find Kristen Bell’s posts from that week. She sang songs from Frozen for an elementary school and rubbed shoulders with senior citizens hunkering down in the same hotel she was. It was refreshing.

That’s life breaking through.

Sometimes it’s just harder to find. And it takes time.

But I have to believe it is worth the wait.

—

Years ago, my life, our marriage, felt like a stinking pile of garbage. We distanced ourselves from all but the closest of friends because we know the human tendency to steer clear of trouble in case it’s contagious. This was not a fair assumption on our part, and eventually, we did start sharing the garbage with people. It still felt like a smelly offering, but we are grateful for those who took it and didn’t run away.

Ours is a compost pile of a story. A continual adding on of dying things, a turning over of the decaying. It’s contained now, like a compost pile, instead of like trash day gone wrong with litter strewn across the street.

And though it sometimes still stinks, it is producing something life-giving. It might not be a fragrant offering, but it is a fertile one, promoting life and growth in ourselves and others.

At least, that is my hope. Sometimes it is still hard to see.

Boston, Mass.

—

As hard as we try to squash it, life goes on. The earth rattles and shakes. The winds stir the waters into terrifying storms. The nations threaten violence and war. If our goal is to obliterate humanity, we’re seemingly on the right track.

Still, the earth yields beauty. Trees and flowers bud and bloom and thrive. Our garden plants stretch across the lawn, bursting with butternut squash. Our tomato plants tilt under the weight of so much ripe, juicy fruit. Our family is fed from the earth.

Grieving the death of one, we also celebrate a birth. A life lost. A life gained. A circle we have yet to break.

The days are dark, the sunlight growing shorter, so we turn up the music, filling the kitchen with song as we make dinner.

Our daughter is learning to play the flute because music might be what saves us in the end.

I cannot stop thinking of a quote I heard recently: “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be in your revolution.” (Emma Goldman)

We can dance AND revolt. Sing AND persist. Create AND call out.

We do not have to abandon ourselves to despair. We can find hope in the beauty yet to come when all we can see right now is a garbage heap.

Life stinks sometimes. I’m feeling that way today. The only thing I can think to do is remember the places where life can’t help but break through. The landfill-turned-park. The cemeteries. The birthing rooms.

Life is always breaking through. Even when it looks like it’s not.

Stolen {A series of S-words, Part 2}

I know I promised you a post on silence next in this series but things happen.

Like bicycles getting stolen.

If you’re following along, this would be incident #2 of a stolen bicycle. You can read all about the first one here.

This time around, it was our daughter’s bike that was taken, and while I’m less surprised that it happened, I’m still upset.

So angry, in fact, I wanted to give the world a big middle finger the day it happened. (I don’t mean to offend, but that was my honest feeling.)

A text from my husband alerted us to the missing bicycle, so our Friday morning, which had been going smoothly was thrown off-kilter. We searched the porch. I called in a police report. (“Yes, that was also us who reported a bicycle missing a month ago, thank you.) We dressed and took a walk up the road just to see if we could see any evidence of her bicycle in the general vicinity where my bike was found.

While waiting for my son to shower, I sat at the dining room table, choking down coffee, feeling like the world is a cruel place. Never mind that our president is threatening a nuclear war with North Korea. I was saddened by the feeling that we aren’t safe in our neighborhood, the one little corner of the world where we spend our daily life.

Our plan to ride the bus into the city and go to the library was delayed. When we finally headed out, it was an hour later than originally planned. And now we’d be eating lunch out.

At times like this, I want to curl up and hide out and cut off everyone and everything so there is no.more.hurt. My daughter, brave and strong thing that she is, has taken the news mostly with grace. She has not shed a tear, only asked if she has to use her birthday money to fix it when it comes back broken. Bless.

My anger does not surface often but when it does, look out. Just as quickly as my anger flares, though, tenderness invades. I want to be mad at the world and take my anger out on no one and everyone, but the only cure for my feelings is to stay open. To look for the good. To notice and see. To hold onto kindness when I’m on the receiving end of it.

Photo by Hanny Naibaho on Unsplash

The dispatcher groaned when I told her this was the second bike we had stolen in a month. The police officer said he was sorry this had happened again to us. They don’t have to show us kindness in the midst of their jobs but they did.

A bike was stolen. It is important. But there are more important things to protect.

—

The world tried to break me as we traveled into the city.

We sat on the bus listening to a mom in the back row tell her young child over and over again to “Stop!” He had already pulled the cord to signal the bus to stop even though they weren’t stopping, and she was irritated. My mind was still full of the black thoughts from our morning discovery, but I tried to get to a happier place. I have been that mom. I am that mom.

“That’s a college, too,” she said to the boy as we passed the school of technology. We had already been through the community college. “That’s the college Mommy was going to go to.” Just a hint of sadness in her voice.

My thoughts turned immediately to my own mother, who gave up college when she learned she was pregnant with me. I have no evidence that this mom abandoned college for the same reasons, but I wondered.

A few blocks later, we passed the county prison which is unimpressive on the back side but looks like a castle from the front.

“Your uncle is in there,” the woman said. I can only assume the boy waved because he said he could see his uncle. His mom explained that his uncle can’t see him, and the weight of these circumstances is heavy in my heart.

Sadness settles in and it’s all I can feel and see. As we drive through the city, I think of my uncle, a bus driver, who died too soon. I notice all the people sitting on their porches smoking in the middle of the day. What are they feeling? Have they lost hope?

The world is broken. And it is breaking me.

This is one thing a bike thief can’t take from me. Stealing from us only increases my awareness of the hurt of others. When I feel pain, I feel others’ pain, too. Suffering of any kind, as much as I don’t want it to happen, helps me see more clearly.

—

Later, we go to Target and are maybe the only family who is not shopping for school supplies. I am speaking in unkind tones to my children who are bouncing through the aisles and sharing eleventy-billion thoughts, including “Whoa. That guy’s beard is cool.”

I don’t even look because we live in a town with a lot of beards. Also, I have a husband with a beard, and I’m not in the mood to be impressed. But they keep.bringing.it.up. I’m just trying to get through Target without spending all our money or losing my s*** so we can pick up my husband from work and go home to eat BLTs for dinner. (Bacon, apparently, is a comfort food.)

We stand in line at the checkout and then I see it. The beard. It’s striped. Orange and black. And it’s on a Target employee. He leans toward our aisle to restock some snacks and I see the full picture: orange and black beard, significant nose ring.

“My kids like your beard,” I say because I feel like I have to say something if I’m staring.

“Thanks,” he says. “I’m rather fond of it, too.”

It feels small, this acknowledgement of another’s humanity, especially when it looks different than my own, but it was big enough to crack the darkness a little more.

Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

I’m not always good at this getting outside of my head thing, so I felt good that this was another thing the bike incident didn’t take from me. I can still offer kind words and a smile to someone else.

On our way back into the city, while stopped in traffic, there was a woman sitting in the median with a sign I could not read. My first thought was “Crap, I don’t have any cash or extra food.” We had just been to Target, of course, but what we had were groceries, not food we could easily give away. She was feet from a grocery store but we were running behind. My intentions are almost always better than my actions in these situations, and as we passed, I read that she was asking for shoes. The only shoes I had were the ones on my feet and they aren’t in that great of condition.

I glanced in the mirror as we drove away and saw another car pull up next to her and hand her something of significant size out the window. I want to believe it was shoes. Or a hot meal. It definitely wasn’t cash.

Witnessing the act softened my heart even more because sometimes I wonder if I’m the only one feeling anything at all for people on the street. I watch more people walk by than stop, and I myself walk by more often than I stop. So, to see someone else do something good encourages me that making a difference, changing the world, showing kindness, is not all on just one of us. It’s on all of us.

This thievery makes me suspicious of the people I see in my neighborhood but seeing strangers do nice things, talking to new people at Target, this reminds me that the human connection is strong and it takes work to keep it that way.

It is much harder to take a step toward knowing someone than it is to judge them from afar. It is harder to show kindness, to want to understand the motives behind an action, than to decide a person’s guilt on the spot.

I want to do the hard things. (Okay, I mostly want to do hard things. I also want to watch Netflix and forget about life for a while.) I even have this wild idea to invite the thieves over for dinner so we can know them better. They have not stolen my hope for a better way to life.

Photo by Patrick Fore on Unsplash

—

A final few words.

“Stolen” doesn’t always have to be a bad thing. We talk about our hearts being stolen by a lover or a child. We say things like “let’s steal away to the beach for a day” and it’s a glorious feeling of freedom. Or if we find a good deal on something, it’s a “steal” and we pat ourselves on the back.

Things, people–they might be taken from us by some person or circumstance, but only we can decide what will ultimately be stolen in the process.

Will a bicycle theft also steal my joy for life? Will it steal my hope that we might move to the city and live in closer proximity to people who might take things from us? Will it steal my compassion?

Or will my heart be stolen by a better, harder way of life?