My shoes were clean this morning.
A couple weeks ago we had a surprise April snowstorm. Heavy snow, wind, trees in early spring leaf. It wasn't good for branches and trees. There are branches and trees broken, tipped, and cut up on the sides of the roads and paths everywhere. The woods look like a tree graveyard.
My shoes were clean this morning.
Tree graveyards can be given new life. From the stump of a dead tree grows new shrubs, new baby trees. The old life giving way to the new.
The paths are muddy. The ground is muddy. As I walk I see areas where the ground has clearly been muddy for a while. Long enough that newcomers have ventured off the path a little, and made a new slightly less slippery and dirty path.
My shoes were clean this morning.
How often when I'm headed in a direction do I feel like I know the path I should be taking? How often do I wonder when the path doesn't go where I think it should go why God is taking me on this detour? When things get hard on that side road how often do I kick and scream and wonder why I feel like I'm walking through the weeds. The ground is slippery. The path is unclear. I scream "but God my shoes are getting muddy!!!" But I don't see the whole path. I wonder if the path God has called me onto is actually skirting the much deeper mud flowing in the path that I thought looked so clean and easy. My shoes might be getting muddy - but they're still on my feet, not sucked into the deep. Where is the grave turning into a garden? Where are bones rising up?
