when it hurts too much to pray – This Side of the River

We are in the second year of drought at the bluff, having come full circle from the high and destructive Lake Michigan waters of 2020 to lower levels which now grace us with an expansive beach. We happily embrace the protective nature of lower water, allowing the bluffs up and down this stretch of coast an opportunity to reach repose, a breath of time to quell the worries up top about losing homes into the lake.

Nature is like that, with its highs and lows, its unpredictability and fickleness.

And yet, much of nature IS predictable: seasons turning, tides that rise and fall on schedule, sunrise and sunset, baby robins in the spruce each June. The weeds will still poke their pesky way into the garden, the deer will eat the black eyed susans, and the toads will hang out underneath the bird bath.

Even so, nature is also filled with unwelcome surprises. No wonder we become watchful and wary, scanning for potential threats. The roller coaster of worry is real; one year you are flooded and caving in, and the next joyfully traipsing upon wide, sandy, pristine beaches.

Chaos tamed for a time by calm.

Likewise, the human experience runs an emotional gamut; carefree days can turn on a dime by a swift and surprising threat. A cancer diagnosis. A silent and devastating stroke. A deathly ill child. Life goes from calm back to chaos and we are caught frightfully unaware.

At least we don’t get eaten in the real sense. In the rest of the animal world, there is constant peril from predators. Truth is, everything must kill to eat; the food chain is merciless in its hierarchy. Once, at our old home at Trout Creek, I was delighting in a male cardinal at the bird feeder in the middle of winter. His cheery, cherry mantle was lovely against the frosty snow. Without warning, a blur of steel blue swept down from above and grabbed the unsuspecting cardinal in a flurry of red fluff. A hungry sharp shinned hawk, an accipiter (a bird that eats other birds) was now somewhere nearby squeezing the life out of that wretchedly beautiful, shapely, lovely cardinal. All that was left were red feathers strewn across the snow. Delight into mourning in a flash.

Gain, loss. Hardy, sickly. Peace, fright. Life, death. We live into it, learning along the way that this is often how life works. We cruise along when things are good then, without warning, we find ourselves on our knees in sobs and suffocation and despair. We aren’t alone in this cycle. Fear and despair and mourning accompany the goose who loses its lifelong mate; the nesting wood duck forced to flee a marauding raccoon with an appetite for eggs; the trees bulldozed for yet another development; the doe who watches the bobcat steal her fawn.

Is there any good to come of it? I believe there is.

Our own crises awaken a buried sense of mortality when our blithe notion of timelessness evolves to a new understanding and esteem for the value and brevity of life.

It often helps us turn back to God our Creator for help, comfort, and mercy. In the animal world, life goes on. New chicks are born. Survivors of the floods stand against next year’s droughts. The dust of death and the ash of mourning are followed by the songs and sun of a new day; mourning slips into morning.

And that is what IS predictable. We will fall and we will rise up. Life’s vicissitudes will flatten us with fear then extend hands of help and hope in the form of neighbor and Creator. If you are in a season of despair, take courage. The nature of nature is to help you back up to heal and stand against the next thing that would steal your peace. Be assured. The rains end the drought, and the tide always turns.

Thanks for reading along.

J.A.P. Walton, Ph.D.

jpraywalton.writing@gmail.com

Image by Tom Ferguson from Pixabay

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I had a solo 6-hour drive to Chicago last week, and the time just dragged. As a matter of fact, the time always drags when I leave this place. As a child, my grandparents would pick us up after school, a tin full of ground ham and peanut sandwiches (ick) on the back seat, and the nose of their old Buick turned toward the bluff in northern Michigan. Time sped up in glowing excitement-my mind bursting with out-of-the-city-and-into-the-forest-and-dunes anticipation of the carefree summer at hand. The opposite occurred around Labor Day weekend. We’d buried our newest treasures, released our “pet” salamanders, and hiked our last dune until next year. Time back to Chicago on that same well-worn road crawled, the summer gone so quickly, a heart full of memories, shoes full of sand.

I am slowly reading my friend and former colleague James K.A. Smith’s newest book, “How to Inhabit Time.” jameskasmith.com It’s not a slow read because it is difficult. No, this is like a deep, purply glass of royal wine; it is to be savored. Part of the reason is that I am just coming off a time of deep change and challenge. Of loss. Of leaving. Of the critical illness of our only child who lives far away. All things filled with longing, lament, grief and fear. Of feeling as if God had retreated to the margins and adopted a hands-off stance. My prayers were whispered. Then shouted. Then stilled altogether. The temporality of life invaded the heart, and the future became the present, which became my history with blinding speed. Yet, it felt as if time had stopped. Even the ticking of my grandmother’s clock was irksome.

It has been a 3-year tempest with numbing spiritual paralysis. In writing about light and darkness in the Arctic, Jamie Smith asks, “What if all the sunlight in your life comes late, at an oblique angle? What if the sun cyclically disappears from a life for nights that seem like they’ll never end?”

Some years are longer than others” he writes.
James K.A. Smith. How to Inhabit Time. Brazos Press. 2022. Quotes from Chapter 2.

Amen to that my brother. For the last 3 years I have stayed almost manically busy. Traveled. Cooked. worked the garden and the food pantry, watched more than a few Hallmark movies. But now, it is time to begin the great, long-awaited reconnection because we are finally settled. The pain of the uprooting is subsiding. The flow of words has reversed course, ready to run like a river. Our daughter’s health is stabilizing. We will soon be joining a new church. Things like a pot of homemade chicken soup and a fresh loaf of bread are no longer tasteless sustenance; instead they waft glorious whiffs of goodness and rightness throughout the house. We are sleeping well in our own bed; Jamie Smith reminds us to treasure the truth that “there is rest in the dark.”

Rested and ready. There was evening and mourning. Then morning. A day. A year. Three years. Only the grace of God gives us the strength and endurance for dark times. And those times are critical to our growth in perseverance and character and hope (Romans 5), creating our own unique history to inevitably shape all our tomorrows.

If you are in a dark time, hang on. The wilderness eventually gives way to glorious and flourishing life because

God is preparing you for something wonderful!”

He and time are on your side.

Thanks for reading!

J.A.P. Walton, Ph.D.

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jpraywalton.writing@gmail.com

Category: when it hurts too much to pray

The Tide Always Turns

“Some Years are Longer than Others”