Encouragement

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Nestled snuggly behind a coffee shop in a small Texas town runs a tiny creek, lazily meandering its way through life. Under a canopy of ancient, gnarled limbs, I’ve discovered it a place of reflection, of refreshment in the hectic-ness of my day-to-day living, and in the still quiet hours, it beckons me. I come, eaten with hunger, and freely feast there on grace’s banquet spread lavishly before me.

This morning I arrived extra weary, soul-thirsty, only to discover that same thirst reflected in the creek’s own parched banks. Their meager waters seemed to mock me, at first glance. Such a change from my last visit, a mere handful of days ago, when the stream ran full, rushing, gurgling with life. Now, little more than a trickle, nearly stilled, leaves the sandy rock-strewn bottom bare, exposed to the burning sun.

I feel its pain, taste it as my own. Yet searching along the bank’s dryness for grief to drink with it, my cup comes up strangely empty. Instead a message, written in the scared banks and sandy bottoms, begins to speak clearly an unexpected message – of life, of seasons of change, of quiet trust in the midst of loss – in the midst of less.

I know about scars, about the deep gouges, about the bloodying that life leaves upon a heart. Loss has been my taskmaster, or my teacher. Loss of dreams, of hope, of companionship – of love. Brokenness birthed in divorce, in failed parenting evidenced by the scaring of my children’s wisdom-less choices. Death, adding its own bloody swath, cut portions from my heart over the years, the deepest bloodletting drawn from my son’s death seven years ago today.

Maybe that’s why, in the quiet hours of this particular morning, the call to come beckoned so strongly. Maybe that is why I felt renewed sorrow at the emptiness I saw reflected here.

Disappointment nudged me to go, yet I found myself instead rooted to the spot by a whisper, breeze-carried, mercy laden. Stilling my heart, hungry to capture every breath of its mysterious message, a vista opened before me I’d missed when first my eyes fell upon today’s parched banks.

Once hidden by deeper waters, the shallows now fairly dance before me, teeming with abundance. Yesterday’s mysterious bubbles and rippling upon the full stream’s surface, enchanting as they were, reveal now in the seeming meagerness the visible majesty of life’s full presence. And I’m left, standing in awe of grace.

It’s the stream’s meandering pathway, not its mistaken parchness, calling loudly to me now, begging my soul to see, to hear, to understand. It required the loss, the less, to reveal the mystery of life. With Grace’s eyes, I now begin to truly see. Stretched before me, carved by the waters of the Eternal, by the Author of Life, by Faithfulness, lies the fingerprint of what once was – the promise of what will yet be, again. And standing in the promise, I am full.





© 20 July 2005
DeAnna L. Brooks

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