Step Into Something New

 I can't recall ever having seen so many babies. They've been everywhere this summer! Baby robins, baby nuthatches, baby chickadees, baby magpies, baby moose, baby bears, baby geese. It's like the whole area has been teeming with the sounds and movement of new life, and it's been nothing short of amazing and adorable. I've loved every minute of it! Sitting down at my kitchen table and eating dinner while watching the mother nuthatch feed her three little fluff-balls is something I'll never forget. Or watching the baby geese at a nearby pond as the parents teach them how to fish for themselves. All the little mouths open wide to their parent's feeding, following them around to the point of being annoying... it's all been the cutest and something I just don't remember having seen so up close or so often. 

And it's honestly gotten me thinking about how the signs of renewal and life are so readily around us but most of us are moving too fast or looking down at our problems too much to even notice that they are there. One of the biggest keys to mental health recovery, in my opinion, is learning how to let joy and happiness into your life once again. After something traumatic and painful has happened, it can be very easy to just close up to life and never see anything more than the ending for the rest of your life. You can get so occupied trying to never fall or get hurt again that you don't see all the reminders happening near you that whisper to your aching heart, This too shall pass. Behold, I am making all things new... even this.

One my biggest challenges personally, in the aftermath of my own trauma and loss, has been to open my heart up to the possibility of dreaming big and being fully alive to life. In the fact of great pain, even when your deepest soul wants with everything in it to believe in the existence of hope, you can start to form a guarded approach, a negative mindset that says, "Even when I choose to believe again... even when things start to feel good again... something tragic must be just around the corner. I can't embrace the joy because some sorrow has to be on its way." It's a strange thing: you walk through your valleys praying to be on the other side but, when the other side finally comes, the valley almost feels more safe and comfortable. You got used to depression and anxiety and loss and sadness, and you forgot what it was like to know laughter and pleasure and fulfillment and delight. The possibilities, the positives of being awake to your big, beautiful life in this amazing world faded away and now, it's like you have to relearn how to see them and appreciate them all over again. 

And so, I began a thing I like to call "beauty-hunting." It's my way of getting outside of myself, my problems, and my own head and heading into the wild that is God and His created world, reminding my heart that there is always something incredible to behold if I'll only have eyes to see. Maybe this is why Jesus referred so often to things in nature as analogies of trust and faith, telling His followers to "consider the lilies" and to look at the sparrow, believing that if God can care for them, He can certainly care for you (Matthew 6:28-30). If even they have a good Father to watch over them, you have every reason to rest in His ability to watch over you. Once you begin to believe that there is a Divine covering over your life - that nothing can touch you without your Heavenly Father's notice or consent - then even the hardest things in life begin to take on their own form of significance. 

When you fall back into the reality of an ever-present, sovereign Maker who has nothing but your good in mind and whose purposes can never be stopped, all your worries about the next shoe dropping ought to dissipate. Jesus Himself said that you don't have to worry about food or clothes or anything concerning your daily life. Why? "Because your Heavenly Father knows you need these things" (Matthew 6:8). God already knows. What a comfort! And to see all these animals and their young being provided for causes me to pause and stop and ask myself, "Is God enough for me? Do I really live like I trust Him? Or am I trying to form some kind of hybrid-faith where I say that I believe but I'm still living from my unbelief." 

Sometimes the simplest way to resetting your anxiety or getting outside of your pain is just to look up. There are wonders all around us, all of the time. How many moments could be passing up by because we're buried in the things that weigh us down! There's a reason why God often told people in the Bible to go outside: consider the stars. look up. widen your view. The moment we turn our face upward and turn down the volume on our problems is the moment when God can finally open us up to the things that seed our hope. A sunrise or sunset quietly watched. The lap of waves against the shoreline. The rush of wind in the trees. And yes, the young ones totally dependent on their parents, reminding us that we are nothing without the protection and loving care of the Creator. 

Maybe this is your invitation to step into something new. You've carried this weight for so long and are tired. You've been so strong and have felt the need to keep holding out when all you really want to do is fall apart. You've forgotten what it feels like to even smile. To be able to feel anything other than loss or pain or constant stress. Wherever you are, take a minute and just look up. Look out your window or walk outside and make yourself notice something. Focus on the bee sitting on the nearby flower or the birdsong floating from the trees. Cause your senses to pick up on the little things you've missed because it's there that you'll find where God is speaking. Life still has much beauty to offer you, even if your perspective has become a little jaded by what you've gone through. The signs of new life still exist and the promise still remains that God does His best work in desolate places through our shattered spaces. 

If you long for hope in the midst of your fear, worry, sadness, unwanted change... if you want your life to expand instead of continuing to close in... slow down and start to count His loving gifts. You will begin to see God reflected everywhere and it will start to feel as though the call to new life is jumping out at you. God always has something good on the other side of our worst. We just need to choose to step into that and believe it to be true.