Freedom and Danger Hold Hands

The natural world is terrifying. I think that's why I love it so much.

I decided to take last week off writing as it was the week of my birthday and I just didn’t want to be stressed out with a deadline for one week. Also, I got the good news that one of my nieces is now engaged and would I please make her wedding dress?! First wedding dress I’ve ever made, so I’ve been slightly preoccupied with that project, especially since the wedding’s in August. (We don’t fool around in this family. We like to get on with things!)

So, I thought it would be a good time to go through some of my very old newsletters back when I only had a subscriber list of fifty people. (It’s now nearly 300! By the way, welcome all you newcomers! What a lovely birthday gift to have more readers show up the week of my birthday. I’m glad you’re here.) Here’s a short meditation I wrote a couple of years ago.

Several things strike me about it—the mountains of answered prayers. When I wrote this, Jonathon was serving out his last year in office, we were living with friends due to mold in the house we were remediating AND trying to sell, I was struggling with mold toxicity symptoms, we were trying to close on our current home, and the SC “Ethics Commission” was putting my husband through the ringer with 139 bogus “ethics violations charges (many were duplicates, but having hundreds makes it look real bad in the press),” trying to make a few stick so they could extract money out of him and make him pay for all the trouble he had caused the Republican Caucus. It was a wild time.

Fast forward to the present…they were forced to drop a hundred of these charges but extracted their pound of flesh via some honest accounting mistakes which he is still paying for, but we’re nearly through that ordeal. My health is vastly improved, and we are calmly and peacefully living in our lovely old house in the country far away from Columbia, SC from which a rotten stench of corruption emanates. I do not miss that place in the slightest. (Well, except for the zoo. That’s pretty great.) God has been very good to us.

At any rate, I hope you enjoy the meditation I wrote during that crazy time in my life and that it gives you hope and encouragement today.

---

Freedom and Danger Hold Hands

Every single spring, I plant things in the ground than run outside the very next day, looking for any signs that something might be growing. Every spring, I put up hummingbird feeders and then internally stomp my foot in frustration each day the birds don’t materialize. I know this is illogical. I know these things take time and that patience is required, but I do it anyway.

It is one of my idiosyncrasies. This year, it's more intense with this enforced state of in-between. Our house is still not quite ready to move into, and I still find myself plagued with symptom riots. When I do not feel well or stuck or both, I look for thriving somewhere else as a distraction from my own frustrations and pains...and to find a piece of goodness to think about.

So, yesterday, I went to check on a nest of newly hatched birds to see how they had changed since the last time I saw them. I found them all dead on the ground below. And I was reminded, once more, that freedom holds hands with danger. In this fallen world, there is no other way around that fact. To live free is to face death. And often, death comes for the most innocent.

The wild and free world is so beautiful and so terrifying. It's a never-ending undulation of life and death, prey and predator, pain and ease, bird song and death cries. It doesn't care how much you want to live or how much you want to accomplish. Because for something to live, something else always has to die. It's nothing personal, it's just a matter of survival. Like the tick that bit me long ago and has left me a bit of wreck of what I could have been otherwise. I'm not dead yet, and maybe I won't die of the damage from Lyme, but it has left it's mark.

And yet, I love my freedom. And I refuse to stay away from grassy fields and cool woods even though ticks inhabit them. I will live and die on my own terms, not covered in layers of clothing and frightened of a disease trying to survive at my expense.

“Nature is cruel. But we don’t have to be.”

Memorable words from Temple Grandin. Words I'll never forget. We humans are made in the image of God. And that is why we should put cruelty to death inside of us whenever we find it. Because God is not like the natural world. He made it perfect and beautiful in the beginning. It's cruel now because we sinned and ruined it. Someday it will be perfect again.

To forsake cruelty is to live in expectation of that day. It is to remember that God in all His glory and power doesn't think it a waste of His time to see and take notice when the most insignificant bird dies and falls to the ground.

After my sad discovery, I went looking for lily blooms. The previous owner planted a lot of them, and I have been impatiently waiting for signs of color. I found them. And I found something else that surprised and delighted hiding in the leaves.

I do not quite understand how the world can be so ugly and so beautiful all at once. My only answer is God's grace.

That’s all for now. Until next time, folks…

P.S. Please consider upgrading your subscription from free to paid if you enjoy reading what I write. Each new paid contributor helps me build resources for republishing my first novel, The Pursuit of Elizabeth Millhouse, and get my second novel, 27, published. Also, make sure to share my writing with your friends and encourage them to sign up for my mailing list! I can only increase the reach of my writing with your help. Thanks, everyone. Hope you have a wonderful week.