O let strong oaks be spindles! Let gardens be dormant. Let wildflowers wonder when. Let frost have a jab at winning. I am not lost in the waiting! I’ll sit in the last of the flowers. I’ll get wrapped in damp cold like small seeds in darkness. I’ll count all the storms that bring new spring without longing for new life on my terms. I’ll wait, wait, wait! A graveyard of frost and old leaves, but never a graveyard of lost things. I’m a gravestone that can’t be made. (and how it has been tried!) instead my souls says, without epitaph and all confidence, “herein lies Hope!”
The day before I found out I was pregnant with Shasta, a leaf fell on my head and I experienced so much joy in just that simple thing. It was a tangible sign of my soul healing. The next morning I was laughing in the bathroom with a positive pregnancy test.
The days are slowly getting shorter and while leaves are on the ground and we’ve experienced some blessed cooler weather, spring and summer lingers wherever it can in the garden.
I see it in my zinnias, in my rose bushes squeezing in every last bloom possible, the new growth on the tips, the wild grape vine heavy with grapes that make your face scrunch up tight.
September is a bit like April here.
The days can be almost perfect, but the window is short and can be sporadic. I’m soaking in every last long, gentle garden day before the world really does turn to fall and winter.
With the breeze, the trees swaying, the leaves falling and the music playing in the garden, it’s been stunning. To say the least.
It’s been in this magic garden season I taught my son how to lie down in the grass. Head down and everything. Like the green grass was your pillow. He didn’t know he could do that. He was tentative at first. But the marvel of it, his curiosity, and my persistence to help and show him how, won out.
So my rambunctious 2-year-old and I have been lying in the grass side-by-side and enjoying our lives. It’s been a highlight for him (and for me!). This new discovery of lying in the grass comes up in conversation at bedtime. He invites me to it when we go out to the garden. He just had no idea something like this existed. That grass wasn’t just for walking, but for lying down. For resting your head in it.
A flood of tears pricked my eyes when I recalled how similar I was to my son. Psalm 23. God makes me to lie down in green pastures. He is persistent I experience this rest and peace! I am laden with the cares of the world, crippled by fear, overwhelm, anxiety, or whatever it may be, but God shows me how to lie down. He helps me do it. Like I helped my son. Head down and everything. I don’t always know I can. I don’t always believe those green pastures are for me in whatever tiring season or painful thing I’m experiencing. Sometimes I’m too scared to lie down, to let my guard down, to embrace joy, to let it be happy or good, to be immersed in blessings.
But I am free to be a child.
To lie down, have a pillow made of grass, and my shoulders relieved of burden. I can spread my arms straight out, face the blue sky without fear, and be a kid. This is being in the presence of God. And God is with me always.
It is always safe to lie down.
Which is the poetic way of saying. . .safe to be, safe to enjoy God’s good gifts, safe to sleep, safe to share my emotions, safe to delight, safe to live in fullness and peace, though life may feel broken and misshapen, or on the brink of breaking. “He maketh me lie down in green pastures” is a beautiful word picture of God being a Father to us. And we are blessed when we let our hearts and souls be fathered by the Great I Am.
We are stiff and tired adults always learning what it means to be God’s children. And He is so good to us. Soon we find ourselves letting the sky be blue, soaked in laughter despite long nights ahead, at peace as though goodness and mercy follow us all the days our life. Oh wait, that’s right! They do!!
So we lie down in the green grass.
Head down and everything.
Parallel
laughter and This Is How! Yes, even your head down in it! two-years-old, and it’s a magic trick, to lie down in grass like this. and we’re loving it, this learning how, such chaotic stillness, Us mother and son, snowangels in summertime. then tears, like waves on shoreline, gather, swell, recede. I’m just like him. I’ve done this before, over and over again. leaning back, brace for impact, finding grass instead. my heart beats home, feels heavenward, oh, peace! so, it’s okay to laugh! to lie down here like this, head down and everything. me, a mother, a woman, a child, me, like this. breathe! “The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. . “ My son and I in the garden. September blue in the sky. leaves I loved in flush of spring waltz right off forever. late summer meanders by, and in this Parade of seasons changing, there’s no season changing here. it’s Psalm 23, Me Wanting For Nothing, surely Goodness and Mercy, the Lord as my Shepherd, for all of my days, for the Whole of my Life forever, breathe!
I had no idea I’d get a rose this big when my little garden began alongside my limping heart on Mother’s Day 2018. It just took about four years to bloom this big, but less than that for me to lift my head and love the life I had.
My encouragement to you is STAY.
Stay in your life. Stay in your days. Stay in your walk with God. It may not turn out the way you wanted it to initially, but in the staying, there will be good, radiance, comfort, stunning gifts and blessings from God.
And you will be blown away by it.
Limping Wings, Trying
I see you with your limping wings, trying to smell the roses, catching yourself on thorns instead.lift your head and breathe. you’re in the garden aren’t you? all in and halfway there!go on, try again. there’s no rushing this kind of life. you fell hard somewhere good.
I can’t really imagine a world where my husband and I pose in pretty neutrals with our squishy baby all cuddled with us perfectly.
My favorite newborn photos to have are the selfies, the real-life snaps, reality without swaths of pastel.
I love having blurry renditions of cuddles, togetherness, and quiet hospital videos I make myself take because I know I’ll regret it if I don’t! (And I wish I had more.) The lack of fanfare matches the intimacy of the season and I love that. Life. Us experiencing it. Us in love. Us growing. Us without pastels.
The season after Shasta was born had us wrapped in a beautiful cocoon. I struggled hard and there’s no denying that, but I also remember how much honest-to-goodness magic bubbled from that first year with Shasta. I’m almost halfway to a year with Heidi and it’s been far less cocoon like. But as a woman I have grown. I am emerging. And I am deeper in my motherhood. The bright, vibrant, layered reality has replaced the magic. Of course, magic moments to come, but it’s a reality now that feels full and big and so vibrant with life.
When I was thinking of our newborn//infant season with our radiant Heidi, this poem practically wrote itself. And it matches how we’ve chosen to document the early days with a newborn. No pastels. Never pastels. But extraordinary and very real beauty nonetheless.
GROWING PAINS (on marriage, parenthood, life❤)
between arguments, long tiring nights, long lasting infant cries, there were lows weren’t there? but still the roses grew, and how the sunflowers bloomed, and baby smiled too. grins, first laughs, and bright-eyed coos, forgiveness was our Marriage Song, and a second round of Morning Glories burst out in a day or two. I think they call this growing pains, I think they call this Love.
Sierra V. Fedorko 