Heart-Bend

 A spring windstorm is moving the treetops in a hidden dance and, as I gaze out the house windows, I think of the poem I memorized as a kid by Christina Rossetti about how the trees "bow down their heads" as the wind passes by. They certainly seem to be bowing low today! The anticipated yet irregular whoosh comes as a gust stirs the woods around my home and makes them come alive with motion, and I'm now grasping the metaphor as I watch it all outside: 

All of life is motion - a dance between us and the world and our Creator - and unless we move with it, we will break... just like the trees in this storm.

And I realize the many ways in which a heart can split when it refuses to bend: same as any tree, if it remains inflexible or the inside is rotten, severance from the Divine dance is inevitable... distance from the One setting the rhythm by which we all "live, move, and have our being," as Paul once told the ancient Greeks (Acts 17:28). Anything that is a barrier to such harmony will be exposed when the storms hit - you will have no option. 

My mind runs back to the early days of my education at the kitchen table, and I remember an object lesson on flexibility: how the palm trees are designed with special trunks so they can sway when mighty winds blow and hurricanes strike. Very rarely do you see a palm tree broken after a storm - they were made for this. And, in a way, so are we. We are not built for an easy life but one of overcoming challenges. Jesus Himself, after all, stated that "in this world you will have trouble," but our saving grace is that He has overcome it all. And, because of that fact, we can withstand the storms. 

And yet... we still make getting through the storms hard on ourselves because we fail to deal with the stuff that keeps us rigid, immovable, inflexible. I recall studying the lives of great women when I was a child... about Abigail Adams, wife of our nation's second president and mother to its sixth, how she held down the fort, so to speak, in raising a young family while her husband supported the cause for Independence, running the farm and spending much of their marriage connecting through letters because John was so infrequently home. How Martha Washington did her part to support her husband George through the tough times of the war as he too rarely made it home for any rest. I remember her saying to a friend in a letter that "our dispositions, not our circumstances" were the key to how anyone could bear under trying situations. 

At the time, I thought I got the lessons. I understood the history. And I comprehended that flexibility is necessary to get through the daily grind of life. But to face the deaths of multiple people you love, to be in the role for several years of caregiver to a family member in a health crisis, to watch your dreams burn and your life turn upside down... that takes flexibility to a whole new level... and I wasn't ready for it. Making friends with the trauma that followed? Yeah... I wasn't prepared for that either. But it was through all these things that the object lesson of flexibility started to make sense: 

It's all in the bending: bending toward God and away from self, bending toward love and away from shame, bending toward healing and away from hurt, bending toward the Light and away from darkness. 

Letting the heart sway in the storm is where real life is learned. Stay stiff, and you'll crack. 

On the other side of pain, I'm now seeing it well, but it's taken many years to learn. And the truth is, things people tell you and things you read and things you hear in the early days of your youth won't make sense until you're in the throes of your own fight. You won't understand what it's like to summon your courage, to lean upon God, to find your way through, until you've been through it yourself. Until you've joined the club of survivors that had to flex and bend themselves in order to still be standing when the storm had passed. 

As I light a low fire in the chimney to ward off Spring's cool chill, gusts rush down and flames blow around. They, too, are joining the dance - ever moving, never stationary. And I tell my heart to keep moving, also. Keep bending toward the good. Don't stiffen. Don't fight. Don't rot from the inside. Put your roots down deep and trust you'll withstand this hard thing. Because you will. Why? Because He said so. And so I let the storms stir me to greater faith, knowing that every one has its end and knowing too that as long as I continue to attune to the Divine motion, all will be well.