My Particular Shade of Blue

Yesterday was the first day of summer vacation 2013. We actually had a bit of a schedule to stick to - things to do, places to go - but we halted everything mid-day to take a bike ride to the park.

I rode my bike, pulling Susie in the "buggy" as she calls it. Leah rode her bike all by herself all the way to the park for the first time ever. That's a long ride!

So anyway. We're at the park. It's a perfect day. The sun is warm, the air is soft, the sky is brilliantly blue and the clouds, what there are of them, are cottonball puffy, floating lazily by. The girls are running barefoot through the grass and I'm sitting at the top of the hill, watching them play together, thanking God for such a beautiful day.

Thanking God for such astounding inner peace.

It was only two years ago, at the beginning of June, same as we are now, that I took my girls to the same park and had the overwhelming sensation of trying to swim, emotionally, up from the bottom of the deep dark sea I had been cast adrift in for so long. It was only a few short years ago that I pushed Susie on the same swings and thought I don't know if I can do this. I don't know if I can make it to shore.

You know that feeling of swimming out in the ocean and being caught out past the breaking point of the waves? Seeing that shore stretch so far along in front of you, but being powerless to reach it because every time you almost get past the breaking point the beginning of another swell sucks you back another few yards? It's like swimming in place, almost. And you loose yourself pretty quickly swimming out there.

That's what it was like at that park two years ago. But this year, now, everything feels good. Everything feels right. I'm strong enough to swim past the breaking point. I'm happy enough to enjoy the waves no matter which side of them I'm on. I'm so happy I'm actually giddy sometimes.

This is healing. Heart healing.

Leah and Susie are running all over the big soccer field, and the sun makes their blonde hair sparkle. I am absentmindedly picking these little tiny blue flowers that are growing in the grass underneath me. I notice the tiny blue flowers for the first time and hold one close to see what it is. I have no idea, except that it's tiny. It surprises me that something so tiny is such a beautiful shade of blue, and that this field of grass is probably full of these little blue flowers and no one would notice them because they are so small. I wonder what compelled God to make something like this. And then I wonder what compelled God to make me - because in relation to the giant blue sky above me, I am so small, and no one would notice my particular shade of blue or think it's pretty because it blends in with the enormous field of grass I grow in.

But then I think about how I sit here watching my girls, who are absorbed in each other and not thinking about me. Still I think about them. Similarly, God is watching me, while I am absorbed in other things, and he very much knows my particular pretty shade of blue because he made it, and it brings him joy whether anyone else notices it's there or not.

What a reassuring thought it is to know that the one who made me and who loves me knows, also, the tiniest of flowers I will sit on today, and the grandest sky I will sit under today, and the gentlest breeze that will rifle the shiny hair about my daughters' faces, indeed about His daughter's face, and knows the tears that will tingle behind my eyes as I give a silent breath of thanks for the gift of peace.