River Ponderings

I wrote this after a tubing experience in July.

When I tube down the river, I can sit back and let the current take me home. There is a place where I stop and swim between two small islands. A narrow sandbar stretches between the two islands where the water depth will barely reach my waist. The current is very mild there. However, right at the back of the lower island, the current is stronger as the water moves from one side of the island to the other. I can touch bottom there but when I swim around the island and meet that current, I can not move forward at all. I can swim and swim, kicking and stroking and I don’t get anywhere.

It is like my job right now. I am swimming and swimming and not really going forward with my life. I know and have known it was over with me there. Like a love affair gone bad. Once it gets to a certain point, nothing can revive it. It is just too late, it has passed out of the view of your life. The current is pushing you to go beyond that experience. It is time to let go.

The current in my life is pulling forward into a new vista of life.
Last month I saw Sr. Molly, “I have this insatiable desire for nature. It feels like a love affair.” I told her. “ When I look at the river or the blue sky through the green trees, I am filled with such joy and elation.” She suggested that I ponder it and ask what the invitation is. When I think of this intense desire in my heart to commune with nature and I consider that God is in the desire and inviting me to something through my feelings, I feel God very close again. I feel God loving me and beckoning me to trust and relax - lay back in my tube and let Her carry me to the next stage in my life.

When I floated in my tube the other night, I realized how I wanted to stay so present and mindful as the beauty passed before my eyes. It reminded me of being on an amusement park ride. It goes so fast and is so intense you try to hold on to every second but it slips through your fingers. Soon the ride is over. So much like life. Life is like floating down the river taken by the current or time. Isn’t it interesting that the name for the flow of water “current” is the same word we use to describe this exact moment.

Not far before I reach home there is a tree whose branch bends down to the water. I grab the branch like the brass ring on a ferris wheel and hold on so I can stay in that one spot and enjoy the beauty all around me. I put my hand into the water and watch the water push my hand and spill over the top of it and I am amazed again at how fast the water is going but when you look at the surface of the water it seems serene. It is similar to getting caught up in the events of our lives while the clock keeps ticking and time keeps moving the seconds keep slipping by. They say time does not really exist. I say Ha to that. Then what are these lines and little bags on my face and that white sprouting on my head.

Looking back on my life I see how the current has taken me down the river of life through so many different places and views of my world. From childhood to young adulthood, a first marriage, a second long marriage, raising my son, moving to another part of the country and then back again to live the life of a minister’s wife. The death of my spouse, a time of grief, becoming a grandmother and now in another marriage and in a place I never thought I could or would ever be. A place with so many blessings and gifts I think I may have already reached heaven and no one told me I died. I may not have died physically, but I have had to die to certain people and places and situations. I have had to let them go. Sometimes I didn’t let go very gracefully or well and sometimes I did.

I have learned in both the river and in my life that the current can be very strong in places and seem non-existent in others. The times when life seems to go on and on in endless sameness is when the current has slowed. But when the tide changes and it is time to get moving, the current gets swift again. You can hold on and try to stay in the same spot or try to swim upstream. You can stay in the same spot if you want but it takes a lot more energy and effort to fight the current than to go with it.

Before I moved to this house, I had no idea the gifts it had in store for me. I liked the house at first sight with all its large windows and view of the river. It has a little park-like setting in the front with two benches, a little waterfall coming down to a fish pond and all surrounded by my plantings and flowers. Inside, I have a room of my own. One that is filled with my numerous books and the things I love. It too has the high double wide window that look down through the trees onto the river. I resisted buying this house because you drive through some undesirable sections to get here including the gas company and some storage tanks. But once you get here it feels like a retreat.