I feel like I’m continually trying to brush away the disappointment tears that dribble down my cheeks during this season I’m caught in. Perhaps caught in isn’t the right word to describe a season, but this season is one I would like to leave behind and walk away from, but it’s holding on for dear life. There’s still growth to be had here, I whisper to myself. Even here, in the middle of the world in upheaval and viruses and racial injustice. Even here.
A dear friend texted me these words the other day; “You are standing on Holy, solid ground” when I called her sobbing. I told her I just wanted to be done with this season of pain and continual disappointment. I wanted to walk away from it, but everything around me seemed as shaky as my emotions in that moment. I called her, because my world shook violently that day, an earthquake pulled into my driveway in the form of an ambulance. The ground that was holding me up, was the only thing solid in that moment because the thing about grief, is needing to feel something that is beyond what can be felt in the human experience and there isn’t words to describe the crushing feeling that grief comes with.
Lifting Our Gaze
When I lift my eyes from the ground in which these size nine feet stand on, the world seems to be crumbling before my eyes. I can’t look at the news anymore, I’m scared to even open the app. It doesn’t help the anxiety piling up inside of my heart. It feels like anxiety is packing sandbags to soak up any form of peace that leaks in, when I take my eyes off of this Holy, solid ground that I am standing on.
And it comes down to the perspective that I am taking.
Where I am allowing this heart to be.
I’ve always had a thing with dirt. I like the feeling of dirt under my nails, to feel it fill in the cracks in my fingerprints because it’s holy. It’s what Adam was formed out of, and the breath blown into that mud sculpture, created life.
To stand on the ground, the dirt beneath my feet is still holy. Oh, how my perspective changes from mud to reverent thanksgivings when I remember that I am standing on Holy ground. To change my perspective is to see dirt as life fulfilled.
I am quick to say that I wish I was through this. I wish that I was quicker to say that God is still in the upheaval that this world is facing. To remind this weary soul that there is still growth here. Reminders of Holy ground in which I stand, when the dirt runs off my feet when I cry in the shower, marking the hard day but ushering in the new.
Perspective matters. For you and I, we stand on solid, Holy ground. Ground that does not shake when the world shakes. It stands firm, life flowing through the roots of our lives.