Can’t See Eden for the Fall

Can’t See Eden for the Fall

My best friend and I stood in the perennial bed in front of her river cottage, looking out over her farm. Ducks waddled and honked as they splashed in the baby pool. The black mare twitched her tail while grazing in the field. Baby Nubian goats headbutted each other and pranced like fawns. Behind us, the river rolled by; the current strong and mud-brown from all the rain that had fallen the previous day.

“Do you love it?” I asked.

She smiled. “Sometimes. There’s always so much work to be done.”

At her house early the next morning, I stood by the window, nursing my infant, and stared again at the farm. Bathed in morning light, the yard was awash with color. The cicadas pulsed and monarchs flitted as if to sate themselves in preparation for the day’s relentless heat.

Five weeks prior, standing beside our friends’ strawberry bed in Wisconsin, I asked, “Do you love it?” and received a similar response. As a visitor, I was able to view the beauty those who lived there—who had to till the ground—were unable to see.

A phrase came to me, then: Can’t see Eden for the fall.

But farming isn’t the only area where the fall of man can be seen.

My best friend and her husband experienced massive flooding last summer, forcing them to remodel the first floor of their home. This, and the fact that my best friend is a tough little homesteader, meant that they hadn’t turned on their A/C before our arrival and had no idea it wasn’t working.

Our visit just so happened to coordinate with a tsunami of a heat wave. We kept the baby stripped down to her diaper, a cool towel on her back, and her swing positioned in front of the fan. But by bedtime, she was frazzled and so were we.

After an hour of domino effect fussing, I got my children settled down and closed the door only to have the girls break loose again. The door stuck because of the humidity, and I jerked and jerked to get it open as the girls continued to scream. Downstairs, I could hear my mom calling out to Jesus while her granddaughter—my youngest—flailed in her arms.

I pulled the door open and commanded my five-year-old, “You need to get control of yourself!”

She bawled, “I know!” and then flung one arm over her little sister and said, “Don’t be scared, Maddie. I’m here. I’m here!”

Well, if that doesn’t make you feel like the most heartless mom in the world, nothing will. I dragged myself across the room and climbed up into bed again. I reached across my eldest daughter so that my arm stretched across my middle daughter, too.

I pressed my sweaty face into the pillow, thought, I am almost 31, and began to cry.

My eldest daughter, hearing me, began to cry again, so I stopped, wiped my face, and whispered, “I love you.”

She whispered back, “I love you, too.”

My two-year-old stopped sucking her thumb and calmly said, “I forgive you.”

I laughed, because there’s not much else you can do in such a situation. And I thought of that phrase again: Can’t see Eden for the fall.

In that moment, I was unable to see the exquisite beauty of motherhood because of the endless toil it requires. I wanted to be spending my vacation bobbing down the river with my best friend or eating ice-cream (I miss dairy!) while watching a movie until midnight. Instead, I’d spent the past two days coming to terms with the reality that life, as I knew it, was over; just as life, as I knew it, was over when I married, became a mom, became a mom of two, and now of three.

“It’s the way it’s supposed to be,” my best friend said, when I whimpered that it was all I could do to be a mom and a wife, meaning that I had very little time to be a good friend.

And in that grace, the curtains parted over Eden and I glimpsed the paradise that will exist one day: beauty without toil; life without death; babies without colic; love without condition.  And oh, what a paradise that will be.

Has your life ever gone through a period of transition?