Lost and Found

 

This was my find on this morning’s walk. I know, I know.  I really need to at least be running intervals instead of walking, but I have the edge of a headache and I needed some quiet prayer time.  

 The past two weeks have been a trial.  Bell is having trouble with an older student in a class, and I am at a loss of how to help her without helping too much.  I hate seeing her so sad and this situation is stealing her joy.  Throw in the never ending power outage and a lot of stress, and we got the longest stretch of discord Jack and I have had since we became friends 25 years ago.  That’s saying a lot.  We sometimes get annoyed and on rare occasions get mad, but it’s always resolved quickly.  Being out of peace with the person you most love is awful.

It turns out that when you lose power for a long time, there is a ton of stress worrying over losing everything in the fridge and freezers, keeping enough water to flush toilets, trying to keep everyone fed and clean, and keeping Rubilee warm enough and fed.  Let me tell you, homework by kerosene lantern was not fun either. Neither of us were getting enough sleep, and the stress and hassle of keeping everything and everyone functioning was nuts.  I was close to tears of relief when the power came back on day 16. However, it really did teach me a lot about the things I need to work on.  There is enormous room for my growth in patience and forbearance and holding my tongue and having a cheerful spirit. I didn’t always handle things with as much as grace as I could have, and I am blessed in that I married a forgiving man. 

The physical damage to the landscape of that ice storm has  hurt my heart as well. We spent two weekends just piling up fallen limbs and cutting the bigger pieces into firewood. We didn’t lose any trees entirely, but they are surely ravaged. Today Jack is going to start cleaning up the trees in the pasture around the house, at least the ones that are in our view of the lake. Then we will have to work on the trees at the old house. We actually got very lucky as far as damage to our trees goes.  So many people lost more than we did.  

I know trees grow back and can be replanted, but it hurts my heart to see so many damaged.  I have walked, ran, and driven past this tree a 

thousand times. It always made me smile because the branches formed a long skinny heart in the middle of the canopy. Now, those branches are broken and the heart is gone.  I was mourning this poor tree on my walk to the river earlier this week.  

This morning I walked the other direction.  There where I have so often walked was a perfect heart embedded in the road.  I don’t know if it was dropped and simply driven over until it became part of the road or if it’s been there since the road was resurfaced, dropped by some workman on a whim.  I don’t think it is just a natural heart shaped rock. However it came to be,  it made me smile. It’s not a tree, but I will take it.