Lately I’ve been asking myself, why does it have to be so hard? Sometimes I get so tired of being strong. Not often, just sometimes.
Today just happens to be one of those times.
So I retreat into my head, sometimes a dangerous place to be. But it’s from here where I soothe my restless heart.
Pictures of vibrant purple flowing fields of lavender open up in my mind’s eye. The golden sunrise is hovering at the horizon. The scented air fills my nose and I linger in the fragrant fields, meandering here and there like a golden honey bee.
And slowly, very slowly, my heart calms. Slowly letting go of the anxiety that clouded us.
I know that we only get what we can handle. And there are reasons for why we suffer and bear witness to things that just don’t make sense to us.
I understand all that.
But I still get tired of being strong.
And during times like these, I do the most simplest of things.
I make like a cat and rest.
The Peace of Wild Things
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
~ Wendall Berry
