I started this because I was ignorant. Because I didn't know any better. In those first few moments of chainsaw and oleander, I was blissfully unaware of how many square feet of wood and debris could spring from thirty odd bushes. My pastor was there to help. If you cut all this down, you'll have to replace it with something, he said. And I ignored it, as I ignore many other things he says, because it was so obvious. So simple. I was making space. Clearing poison. Bad stuff gone, makes good things easy.
And then, after years of branches, overgrown and unwanted, had poured themselves down on my shoulders--- covered me in dirt and dust and despair -- then, I wished I'd listened. But there was nothing done that could be undone. And when one can't go back, one must press forward. At least that's what I wanted to believe, not counting on the third option, the one involving nothingness. Apathy and a pool of barren dirt, growing ever more stagnant and riddled with emptiness, swallowed the momentum of my naivete, until it was all I could do to keep from drowning in sunbaked clay. And drown I might have, had I not broken myself against the ground and turned the pieces of my life into the soil with a hand me down spade.
It is easy to forget, listening to the music of leaves and water and flowers, how life unwanted gave way to dirt neglected before achieving unexpected rebirth. But before there was space to fill, there was space to make. And once made, it cried out to be used. To be planted. To have roots sunk into it. But our parcel of earth, once inconsolable, is now at peace beneath the weight of our toils. Indeed, it is our own private miracle that we now search for places to place new things in.
I need that private miracle in my soul. The poison of years has been ripped from it, packed into a forty yard bin and removed to place where East is furthest from West. In the back corner, there is life blooming, designed in love and bursting with potential. But I am increasingly overwhelmed by all the empty space still left to be filled...daunted by the tasks I have not even thought to think of yet.
In the middle of all of this, I returned to my hometown for the first time in five years. It was amazing to see some old friends, soothing to drive familiar streets. But everywhere was the reminder that I'd left this place. A thing done that could not be undone. I will visit again, but there can be no going back. So where is forward? How is onward? This space inside cries out to be filled, and I cannot abide the thought of leaving it barren and empty, like so much dirt at the furthest end of a yard.
Dear, God in Heaven. I landscaped the yard. Just like You told me to. Just like I said I would. Please landscape my heart. Amen.
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