There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under the heavens:
a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.
When I was in college I had one of these rectangular posters of these verses in calligraphy. It moved with me to three dorm rooms and one apartment, and somewhere after I moved to St. Louis, it disappeared.
In these last few weeks, I have experienced all of these different times, it seems. A friend who just had a long-anticipated baby lost someone close to her just a few days later. The love for her child is taking root here in the midst of spring. I thought about this as I worked in my garden uprooting dead stumps of plants and some strange weed to which I am apparently allergic. I worked at killing this weed as well as the Chinese honeysuckle and this huge crop of cottonwood and pecan tree shoots and milkweed vines that overwhelm my yard with the least relaxation of vigilance.
It is the same way with my heart. Just as with many other people, I carry so many scars and weaknesses from my childhood, from the times I have been hurt, by my tendency to anger, by my impatience, by my arrogance and hubris-- there is so much from which I still need to heal, and so much that I have done that I need to endeavor to heal in penance and regret for losing sight of how I SHOULD think and act. I am particularly prone to being afraid of taking really big risks for fear of being rejected. And yet, I am called to do these. The one who loves me most of all calls me to be the very best me I can be, and when I fail in that, who knows how that affects those who see me stumble?
I need to tear down the walls I erect around my heart, especially those walls I place between myself and God. I need to build up my trust in the goodness of those around me as a reflection of God's love. There are times when I have wept, when instead I could have been laughing-- my mother recently gave me a very sentimental possession which had belonged to my father, who has been gone now for over 6 years, and at first, I wanted to put it as far away from me as possible, since touching it reminded me of the day I lost my dad all over again. Another of my dear friends lost her mother this winter, and she is sorting through the accumulated treasures of a life that lasted nearly 100 years. Imagine the things that had happened during that time!
One of the things her mother had kept was my wedding invitation that I had sent her nearly 24 years ago. It was so well-preserved, and the fact that she actually went to my wedding and stood up for me is still a memory that I will always treasure, especially since my only grandmother-like figure, my step-grandmother, was unable to be supportive of me on that day. But my friend's mother, mother-in-law, and step-grandmother were there for me. What a blessing! What treasured memories of their love do I still have, and if people like that love you, nothing can really be as dreadful as all that. We all move from mourning what we have lost to celebrating what we have at least had. And I have had the love of all these wonderful people in my life.
There is a season for everything. Everything but love, which endures every moment, and is the purest sign of God's amazing, uplifting presence with all of us.
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