On Holding On and Letting Go

It is finally spring again...almost summer, really. It has been just over 7 months since I wrote the post entitled Holding on and Letting Go and almost as long since I have written anything at all. The winter was a dark time, beginning with the day before Thanksgiving, when I was told that we would soon have to move from the farm where I work and we have made our home. We do not own this house or the land I tend, and are here at the whim of the organization that does. The organization's financial state is primary and that this place has captured my affections and that I work diligently to help take care of the farm, matters little in the grand scheme of its runnings.

I have come to terms with the prospect of moving on through long months of wrestling with grief and with hope in an alternating, exhausting rhythm. All who have faced impending, unwanted changes know of the inner turbulence experienced when life is suddenly wrenched away from their supposed control. But those who, in their fearful yet faithful hearts, determine to trust God (as seemingly impossible as that might feel at the time) also come to find that relinquishing their grasping hold on the course of their lives brings the freedom to surrender to the care of the Good Shepherd. It brings a new realization of His nearness. Or such has been the case with me and with my journey of these last months.

I haven't wanted to write for months and wondered whether I ever would again, really. I questioned whether there was any point and whether I had anything to say that was worth reading...in other words, "Why bother?" And then yesterday a friend encouraged me to begin again and this morning I awoke to the conviction that writing is for the writer, really, and if others enjoy reading the words set forth...well that is a secondary reward. 

Heading into summer and its steamy, hot, abundant fruitfulness I am grateful, again, that I am surrounded by the blessings of my life as it is now...by fragrant woodlands, by a large, demanding, productive garden, by butterflies, bees, songbirds and very loud domestic fowl, and by the new awareness that I can enjoy and appreciate all these gifts for today, not knowing for how long they will be bestowed. And, best of all, I recognize that am ever in the presence of the always patient, always loving, always beckoning Good Shepherd who guards my heart and guides my life.