Lessons From the Creek
It happens around March, always when I’ve had enough of cowering cold and 6 pm sunsets, I start to trek the trail down to our creek. It’s pretty barren and dreary then, but there are hints of life prophesying their arrival. I have this memory of the first time I laid eyes on our creek. We hadn’t even moved in yet . . . the seller was gracious and let us store our things here a few weeks before our closing date, so this was the first chance we’d have to traverse the land that was soon to be ours. Because we had really only viewed the house in the winter months, and the elderly owner was not too keen on visitors, we really were a bit blind to all the attributes of the land and surroundings. We truly were arriving on “a wing and a prayer”, but that story is for another day. So while our youngest babies were walled up somewhere with a patient sitter and my husband was doing his best to cram all our stuff into one empty storage room, my oldest son and I had ourselves a little exploration. He has always been the one to challenge what I think is doable . . . in a really good way; although that day, we were both curious and game to find this creek our realtor mentioned. We didn’t even know where to find the trail; we just booked it over the back field, picked our way through prickly vines and treaded down the big hill, following the sound of water. The moment when we both kicked off our shoes and stepped into the freezing stream was magical, because we couldn’t contain our giddy joy at having a creek to romp in, and because we were the first to know the beautiful secret . . . just us two. Over the many years that have passed since that precious time, our creek has seen a lot, and has seen me through a lot. I have laughed hysterically around too many campfires to count. I have wept alone on the stone bench at our cross. I have sat for hours on a plastic chair cooling my feet in the water and steadying my mind with its music. For me, the sound and sight of water is a cleansing gift, a welcome therapy.
And . . . there are things the water can teach us. Does it ever seem as if all of life is just rushing along in this coursing river? Sometimes it’s steady; other times, after torrential rains, it’s foaming and churning and flooding the banks. But all the while, we keep moving in it; and as we bob along, what becomes familiar? Rough irritating stones, hairpin turns, ugly tree roots wrenching away from the dirt. There is the elevated sky, beautiful with puffy clouds and streaming sun rays; but sometimes dark and ominous. And then, a kid comes along and decides it would be fun to build a dam; you know, drag heavy rocks over into a shallow and build a wall where the water temporarily stops . . . pools. How preposterous to try and stop the gushing force? What would be the purpose in that? But the kid thinks it’s worth it all, just for a sunny summer afternoon to see his face in the clear mirror surface, to dip in his hand and cup refreshing cool life-water to his lips. Or maybe make a little boat out of sticks and leaves and watch it move slowly across the surface.
I make this long analogy of life and water because I’m seeing that sometimes I’m a casual observer sitting in the soothing cool of shade trees on the bank. But more often, I’m immersed in the flood, coursing and churning along, doing the next thing . . . and the next. School, work, dinner, taxes, calendars, appointments, laundry, texts, tests, and on it goes. The feeling of the overwhelming flood becomes my normal skin. Who can dam it all up . . . stop the anxious flow? I don’t like the answer; but I’m staring at it in the mirror.
God created lovely water to sustain life; and yet at times life gets eaten away in the swiftly flowing force just like stones crushed into sand over time. Water is always moving, rarely quiet. And so I must choose my relationship with the stream . . . not the other way around.
And maybe the best approach is not to focus on the things that must be done, the endless rush of perceived responsibility or obligation. Instead, what if I focus on the timing of things, the gentle alerts and alarms that remind me I could just stop and build a little dam. Like how right now, in one of my craziest seasons, I’m committing to a daily retreat. And by ‘retreat”, I really mean “about face” . . . a pivot of sorts. When it’s the most preposterous moment to walk away from a task, an activity . . . well that’s precisely when I am retreating . . . just for 15 minutes or so. Just when I’m most sucked in to a thing, when I feel I can’t be interrupted, and need to keep going . . . well that’s the bell that sounds the call to retreat . . . a daily discipline, and for me,
my Lenten devotion.
These daily retreats are not the idyllic weekend getaways that I savor with friends and look forward to, counting the days. No, these retreats are hard. Maybe I should name them break-aways. Because they require a decision, a sacrifice of what seems necessary, right, and responsible, in exchange for sitting and breathing and releasing every lie about who really gets things done around here . . . me or Jesus?
Now I’m only a week or so into this unusual practice, and I’m no expert. But I will say, those 15 minutes feel a lot like sitting on the bank and letting the water lap at my feet. For the abandonment of what seems urgent, I’m rewarded with a quiet, dammed up pool. What was vaguely familiar and swirling by in the rush is now precious, prominent, and of utmost importance. And something resets in my soul.
But the break away is still so hard, and maybe it always will be. After all, water is meant to roll along. But I am not. That much has become crystal clear. I know it by signs, like marks on trees . . . tight shoulders, an achy neck, a mind so cluttered it can’t remember, when there seems to be no answer to why technology is failing me, or knowledge is failing me, or I am failing me . . . all signposts. And this daily retreat is helping me recognize them.
And so I stop a while here in this sweet memory: me and my boy splashing wild in the steady flow of brand new discovery, feeling the delicious anticipation of what life might be like living near a creek, and learning all of its secret lessons.
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