Going the Distance

Going the Distance

Barn swallows are writing invisible calligraphy in the azure sky, and the unglaciered hills in the distance are brilliant, summer green. Hummingbirds are sipping nectar from the purple flower baskets hanging from the eaves. An abandoned windmill, in the next field over, is rattling apart in the cool breeze that sweeps under the porch, making me long for a light sweater even though it’s July.

Our time here in Wisconsin has passed with the intense, vibrant fluidity of a dream, and though I sit here on the front porch, trying to categorize it, I find it impossible.

I do know, however, that I shall miss our little farm. I shall miss the stark beauty of everyday life. I shall miss the first heralding cry of spring (the returning birds so loud, it makes you wonder if there’s something wrong with your ears).

I shall miss our gardens, and the open windows beaded with moisture because the temperature dropped overnight.

I shall miss the people we have met, and the friendships we have made. I shall miss seeing the artists, displaying their eclectic layers, at the Co-op or walking out of the library and happening upon a man with tangled, red dreadlocks playing the saxophone, the bright notes dancing down the empty street.

Two months ago, when it looked like our move was going to go through days after we decided to head back to Tennessee, I took a moonlit stroll through the field. My husband had mowed a path for me around the perimeter, and so I walked it after our girls were tucked in bed—smelling the white blossoms in the thorn-covered trees and looking at the clouds’ shadows moving across the silvered land.

I felt such an ache in my chest and thought: How can I leave this?

You see, it has been immeasurably easier to have “good” relationships with my family, because the issues that need resolved do not affect me here. While packing today, and earlier this week, I felt that wall erecting itself around my heart as I mentally prepared to return to a situation that often causes a trickle-down effect of frustration, miscommunication, and pain.

But I also know that God is a God of reconciliation; He is a God who created the family unit (grandparents, parents, children, grandchildren, siblings, aunts, uncles, and cousins) to work as a healthy, cohesive whole. So I remind myself that things are different now, despite the fact that some circumstances are very much the same, and possibly will be for the next forty years.

The situation is different because I am going to make a point to be different: vulnerability instead of walls, trust instead of judgment, love instead of fear.

This desert oasis of Wisconsin has changed me; it has taught me that God loves me without condition, so I am willing to communicate more openly and honestly with Him, and with my family members, without the fear of losing that love.

Therefore, I am going to get up from this chair, set my laptop aside, and continue packing. In two weeks, I am going to return to the beautiful, complicated, imperfect puzzle of my family life. And I know that, as we each work at understanding each other at a deeper level—and loving each other with a more perfect love—we will naturally find ourselves drawing closer to God: the One who created the family unit to help us understand our broken world by first going the distance and loving each other.

“Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.”  ~1 John 4:11-12

How have you seen God reconciling your family life?