This field I’m standing in, it’s nothing like the one I imagined with such optimism only one year ago today. Back then, I imagined the rows with the hint of a smile. I sketched the pattern for how I would plant, I imagined myself dipping to the ground to drop each seed in thoughtfully, lovingly, purposefully. I imagined the blossoming greenery of my mindfully-improved habits, and the tender shoots of next-level attentiveness in my relationships. I imagined that the King would come visit me in a field that looked magazine-worthy and I would be proud of what I had to show him.
I imagined all that under blue skies with the confidence that there would be seasonally-appropriate rains to bring to fruition all my hopes and dreams.
This field I’m standing in - it’s not edenic, it’s apocalyptic. It’s rows are haphazard, chaotic. It’s hard to even tell what’s plant and what’s weed. Things I had hoped would flourish are snapped off and brittle, if they’ve even pushed through the soil at all. And things I never, ever, ever dreamed would be in my field are there in abundance, with all their spiny brambles reminding me that they are there and they will keep being there, and they will grow and spread even more if I do nothing about them and that trying to uproot them is going to be very, very painful.
This field I’m standing in is one I barely recognize, with fault lines like huge scars - terrifying me with the reality that what I assumed was stable is, in fact, floating and shifting, clashing and subsuming.
And somehow, I will have to give an accounting of all this.
I’m standing in this field, trying to shake myself out of a state of shock, absently moving my hoe through the dirt and debris.
The King is coming.
What can I say to You? What do I have to show You?
He draws closer and now what? Any other year, I’d make sure He would see me busy, see me planning and planting and fussing my way towards the patches that needed some extra attention. But now? I feel unable to invest effort into anything that requires cognitive assumption of a secure tomorrow. Tend something? Who knows what tremors may rock the ground beneath me between today and tomorrow? Who knows what fury the skies may unleash that will slice off all my progress at it's base? I know I'm supposed to be busy making something beautiful out of this corner of earth He's entrusted me with, but I just can't seem to find any rhyme or reason in the pandemonium around me and it feels a little too far beyond fixing.
The King is in my field, and my feet feel too leaden to even take a step forward to greet Him.
There’s only tears now. Tears cutting a path down my dirt-caked face. I’m-Sorry and How-Could-You and If-Only and Next-Time all meet and jumble in my mouth and when I open it to speak, nothing comes out but a sob. I can only lift my hand a little to motion around me at the disappointment that my field has become, and when I see Him looking at it - looking at it deeply like no one else can look at it - I don’t even have the strength to stand before Him anymore and I’m on my hands and knees in that hateful field pounding my fists into the soil and grief-wailing incoherently.
The King is in my field. While I’m crumpled over the dirt, He is here with me, tenderly plucking a tiny sprout from the earth and holding it before my eyes. The new-green life, all hopeful and high-reaching; I trace it from its leaves down it’s stem and to it’s genesis: it’s broken heart. All that is growing here had its beginnings in a shattered shell, in the loss of It’s facade of structure and order. I’m reminded that it’s true - that that’s the nature of all that lies beneath the verdancy of vibrant life - a broken-hearted seed.
The King is in my field full of broken pieces. I don’t know what to say to Him except just to take the tiny sprout back and plant it again in the earth and wordlessly beg Him to give me the courage to patiently wait while it flourishes and grows straight-backed and strong.
