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)
We paused on our evening walk by a stand of sturdy broad-leafed plants, with their rounded flower heads bursting demurely into dusty pink. It’s a habit formed in kindergarten for both of us, this annual foray into a milkweed patch. After years of monarch caterpillar awareness, we “knew” that it was just that time of summer that there should be some caterpillars in that milkweed, somewhere. And we needed to say hello, show them to our girls, maybe remind them that there’s a nice little flower garden full of butterfly-friendly flowers in front of our house that they’re welcome to visit when they’re grown up.
It was a delightful little game of hide-and-seek, peering under leaves, along stems—and it was a credit to surprisingly clever camouflage that we had almost given up when we finally spotted one. But then it was like our eyes adjusted and we suddenly saw them everywhere! Some tiny, some large, dressed in yellow, black and white stripes, far too busy eating to notice they’d been discovered by friendly nature enthusiasts. Did you know that a Monarch caterpillar is capable of eating an entire milkweed leaf in less than five minutes? Pretty amazing mouth-work for such a tiny creature!
A few weeks later, walking past the same stand of milkweed, I witnessed a delicate orange and black butterfly flitting from flower to flower, graciously sipping nectar, and I found myself marveling anew at the beauty of God’s design for sustainability in creation.
And while we’re marveling over Monarch butterflies, let’s not forget how those gorgeously designed wings covered in tiny delicate scales will carry this creature 2,500 miles to Mexico come fall, to spend a warm winter on the exact same few trees its ancestors have spent winters on for ages before, and then all the way back again in the spring to lay the eggs that will become that next generation of caterpillars—because there isn’t any milkweed in Mexico!
Whether the calendar says so or not, the last day of August always seems like the last day of summer to me—and seeing that always makes me kind of sad. Nothing against fall or even the coming winter, mind you. I truly love the changing seasons. It’s just that summer in Minnesota is somehow just a little briefer than the other seasons, and I never quite manage to get in all the swimming and fresh peaches on ice cream that I want to before it’s time to pull out the sweaters and hot cocoa again.
Red is for ripe wild strawberries discovered along fence rows, sweet and warm with sunshine…
Orange is for a monarch butterfly, minutes old, clinging trustingly to my wide-eyed daughter’s finger…
Yellow is for the elegant beards of irises…
Green is for sun-dappled woodland ferns…
Blue is for swan families floating on riffles of water…
Purple is for brilliant masses of fireweed…
Rejoicing Hills 