Life has been on my mind quite a bit this year as many friends have lost parents, spouses, relationships. And I've paid more attention to natural cycles since we now spend so much more time outside in 'just' nature - not at an event or ballpark and such. Funny thing is - everything has a lifecycle - and we get stuck on the birth and death parts somehow losing track of the importance of the in between times. As I've walked about these past few months I've seen many a city employee pruning, clearing out beds, raking leaves in preparation for the rains and the Spring. What a lesson this has become for me - I owe it to myself and to the people in my life who help give life to prune from within, to let go, to prepare for new life to grow. The rains have come to Vancouver and while the grey can get tiring, there's always a little glimmer of sun just when I seem to need it most, and there's never a day that's rainy all day - we're always able to take off our hoods, if only for a little while. And while the rain gets old and sometimes messy it does make our space feel cleaner, fresher, bathed - exposed even. With all the rain new perspectives are uncovered; as when water rushes over the same piece of land repeatedly. I'm personally challenged to find entertainment in new ways, to allow myself to get wet and embrace the nourishment. And just when it feels like I'm taking a turn from clean to mildewed, the sun peeks through with assurance that new life is around the corner.
As I walked for the first time since before Christmas around the seawall this week, the sun did her thing. She danced on the water - a reminder that new life is coming. There were even little sprouts of bulbs peeking at me around tree roots along the route back home. I pondered what I needed to clean out and prune in preparation for new growth - I remembered that everything has a life cycle. Not just people and plants, but relationships too, and that my challenge is in the letting go - the pruning if you will. I find myself wondering about friends from the past (some way past - high school and college) and sometimes feeling sad that we've lost touch instead of honoring those memories and accepting that those friendships have completed their lifecycle so that new ones in their infancy can be properly nurtured. I realize that I'm a mere infant in our family's new reality, a toddler by now maybe, and that I've so much to learn about myself, my family and my marriage. It's energizing really to accept that we're all somewhere in the midst of a cycle of life and it's daunting to think that pruning is a natural part of remaining healthy. And it gets confusing because maybe I'm supposed to be pruning in one area while feeding another and helping guide our children in their own development and shedding and it makes me tired sometimes. But the grey days that bring the rains serve as permissive encouragement to do just that. They tell me that now's the time to take stock, tend, trim and nourish - this is soul work. And they validate that this is tiring work and the rainy days make naps so very much sweeter - for this I'm grateful.
I've re read all of my blog posts to date in the past few days and that's been a fun walk through some of this cyclical life we've been leading. This year it's been incredibly tangible to see how we've tended ourselves, our relationships and our faith. We've done pretty well, I think - some areas we've tended better than others - but we've certainly done this thing with honesty and, I hope, authenticity. It's felt authentic. In reading those posts I've seen the themes of grief and gratitude repeatedly; those two descriptors speak to the tension in which I live walking through various stages of life. It's always a struggle to maintain balance and there's something about finding a balance between grief and gratitude that pushes me. I've lamented the loss of the normal we knew but am incredibly thankful for the normal we've now defined. I've lamented the loss of proximity to family but am thankful for technology that closes the spatial gap of miles and for people who function as family in this new place. Lamentations are normal - holy even - there's a whole book in the Old Testament of them and there are 60ish Psalms of lament. That must make them important too - necessary really. How can we actually celebrate gratitude in its most basic form if we don't have the perspective provided by lament? How can we find hope in the midst of dark, grief-stricken places if we don't know what it means to be truly grateful for life and its good gifts?
So here I sit - cocooning, reflecting, turning inward, allowing my introvert her time to blossom into her new self. And I grieve. And I hope. After all, I know that around the corner Spring is coming and that now is the time to prepare. Now is the time to make ready for new growth and let go of those places that have withered.
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