Sometimes, when you’re sick in bed, watching the world go by without you outside your window, it’s good to do something other than focus on how sore your throat happens to be. Or maybe, for you, it’s more like sick in heart and focusing on how deep your hurts happen to be. Either way, they can end up feeling pretty similar: discouraging.
I’ve found myself in both shoes at various times in my life, but for the past couple weeks, it happened to be in the physical realm, when my body decided to ignore all the items on my to-do list and important things I had on my schedule and sent me to bed instead with barely a voice to ask for a drink of water. This was not in the plans, not to mention how many well-laid plans it managed to throw awry.
These are the times, I’ve found, when it’s time for a good dose of Psalm 103 right along with all the Vitamin C:
“Bless the Lord, oh my soul, and forget not all His benefits” (vs. 2)
It’s called turning my focus from all the things I’m missing out on to the gifts I have been given, which are many but too easily forgotten in the trouble of the moment. Sometimes I think that’s one of the main reasons I even take pictures: so I can look at them later, remember, and be thankful. That’s also one of the main reasons I keep a journal. I think everyone should have some tangible way of remembering the little and big things God has given them, even if it’s just a running list on the counter. Because we are oh, so prone to forget, but what incredible healing and uplifting there can be in the remembering!
So from my sick chair one afternoon, I scrolled through my photo files for the months of June and July, and remembered some of His benefits.
I remembered how we held our breath, waiting for the strawberry blossoms to turn to tiny nuggets of red sweetness in the canopy of the field grasses,
and how the butterflies danced amidst the short-lived lilacs, then moved to the field flowers.
I remembered exhilarating cannonballs into cold lake water on a sultry day (or timid tiptoes in, as the personality went),
how we welcomed the first clouds of dragonflies zooming in to bring welcome relief from too many mosquitoes,
that day we swam with turtles.
I remembered the spotted fawns trailing their mamas, stopping to stare wide-eyed at us from the edges of the forest,
watching from a respectful distance as a brave mama turtle left her eggs to the fates of nature,
that morning we got fresh doughnuts from a bakery and stopped to watch goose families paddling down a winding green river.
I remembered how the wild roses bent along the lake edge to almost touch the lapping waves,
the day I sat on a lake shore in a gentle rain of mayflies and thought how wonderful it was to be covered in bugs that didn’t bite you,
the day I and a three-year-old chased a brown-eyed cottontail through the field grass.
I remembered the fish we saw, and the fish we caught,
the evening we celebrated our first summer birthday girl,
and waking up in the middle of the night to hear the loons yodeling and see the fireflies dancing outside my window like a thousand elusive stars.
I remembered eating ice cream in a shop that smelled of vanilla and waffles,
tiny birds carefully held by a small girl with a hole in her smile,
the way dandelions gone to seed look in the sunshine.
I remembered climbing among quiet pools and granite boulders along the Bigfork River,
the day we finally found the robin’s nest’,
and watching the full moon rise up over the flower garden.
And, as is often the case, it was easy to go on from there and remember the things I didn’t have photographs of, like…
healthy baby kicks in my womb,
soothing tea with honey,
and my husband and dear friends who washed my dishes, cared for my children, and brought me food and medicine while I was down.
And you know what? I wasn’t healed when I was done. I was coughing as much as ever. But in my soul, there had been a healing shift from the mentality of “poor me” to “wow, look at all my blessings”—and sometimes, I think we actually need that kind of healing more.
“Bless the LORD, O my soul; all that is within me, bless His holy name…
He who forgives all your iniquities, and heals all your diseases,
who redeems your life from the Pit and crowns you with loving devotion and compassion,
who satisfies you with good things, so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.” (Psalm 103: 1, 3-5)
They are one of those last American frontiers of wilderness, these mysterious places that have triumphantly resisted many a pioneer effort to tame them. We drive north, and great stretches of land spiked with the craggy silhouettes of stunted spruce and feathery tamarack are all that meet the eye for miles. From the speed of the car window, it would seem that these trees are the only flora that manage to monotonously thrive amidst the swamp grasses. And inaccessible as they are, it can be a misconception difficult to prove otherwise.
If you’re fortunate enough to traverse a bog walk, however, you will find out that beneath the feathery tamarack branches there are wonderful, amazing plants that thrive in the water-logged, acidic soil, plants that you will see nowhere else but here. There are strangely beautiful carnivorous plants…
…
There are cranberries, bunchberries and labrador tea.
And who knows what else might lie beyond? The view a state park board walk lends is only a glimpse into this mysterious damp world of peat moss and uncertain footing. I like the intrigue of this, imagining the rare orchids hidden away in the vast reaches of the bogs, never to be discovered.
Rejoicing Hills 