The world is loud and terrible this summer. It is as if the entire planet has tilted on its axis and dipped us all in nightmare.

The grass outside my bedroom window is dotted with yellow maple leaves. I don’t know if this is because summer is already ending or because the largest and oldest of the maple trees is dying. Perhaps it is both.

Land and growing things are broken, nations are broken, bodies and minds are broken. And we respond by shouting at one another.

 

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I indulge in shouting some days, but, mostly, I respond by retreating into silence.

When my children explode over cracked Legos and the last popsicle, I struggle to stay with them in the noise. I want only to slip away, to climb the steps to my bedroom, to sit in the curve of the bow window noticing yellow leaves on the lawn outside.

The world grows louder, and I grow quieter. Sometimes, this feels like wisdom, but I know it is also weakness.

It requires strength to share our stories. To risk being misunderstood.

It requires faith to tell small stories. To believe that what seems to be inadequate is of value.

When my fourth child was born, my body struggled to make milk for her. The hormonal peaks and valleys of that process seemed to switch a lever in my brain.

I became depressed.

I had so many reasons to be happy, but depression sucked all emotion from my mind and filled the emptiness with anxiety. I can remember sitting in my comfortable, soft rocking chair, holding my baby, and trying to remember why I had once cared about babies or repairing old farmhouses or ordering seeds for the spring garden or anything at all. I could no longer remember why it mattered if any of us ever got out of bed.

When I stopped trying to nurse my baby, and the last of my milk dried up, the depression lifted. A severe mercy.

It meant that I knew happiness again.

It meant that I knew sadness again.

Healing looked like a renewed capacity for both joy and sorrow.

This morning I read these words from Psalm 105:

Give thanks to the Lord, call on his name;

make known among the nations what he has done.

Sing to him, sing praise to him;

tell of all his wonderful acts.

And I remembered what had happened to me after my daughter’s birth and knew that I did have a song of praise.

Thank you, Lord. Thank you for healing me enough to grieve.

 

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