A few weeks ago, I had a long conversation with an old friend who is coming up on the first anniversary of her dear mother’s passing. She asked me how long it took after Vernon’s death to get my energy and focus back after heavy grief. I couldn’t answer clearly as I’m not sure how focused I’ve ever been, but I listed off the obvious helps I could recall: regular exercise, writing, artwork, temporary support groups, therapy, connective time with friends. But even as we talked, it dawned on me that those things were just fillers. Sure they helped, but none of us can know how long a healing will take.  If we could, we would all take the best-proven pill. Perhaps it doesn’t matter what we do. Perhaps all that matters is that we get through the time without pushing ourselves backwards (but there is even grace for that…some self-destructive behavior can be part of the process as well, although coming back from that may require even more time and effort.) But somehow, we do get through the time—that’s just basic waking and sleeping and eating and breathing. Just because it feels like forever, doesn’t mean that’s true.

My grieving friend and I spoke about how deep healing happens under the surface…and perhaps it is just a matter of believing that it’s occurring at all. We can’t see it, we certainly can’t feel it, but what if God is always nudging us toward our health? What if the keys to wholehearted living are hidden within us, but they just take time to emerge. Regrowth is the natural order of things. It’s in our DNA as carbon creatures. It’s true that our physical bodies act completely opposite as we hurdle through our time here (thus, the painful gaps left by our losses and disappointments), but our minds/ hearts/spirits, the hidden parts of ourselves that actually run the show: this is where regeneration happens. I don’t know much about gardening, but I imagine some seeds take longer to germinate than others. I know that some years, a tree might not bear much fruit, and then suddenly it does!

I remember when Vernon was in the early days of his coma, with all sorts of beeping digital monitors plugged into his skull. He looked like a science experiment—perhaps he was! They were keeping his brain activity as low-level as possible so that it couldn’t consciously think, just aware enough to keep the rest of the body and its vital organs ticking. I noticed in this stage how quickly his wounds healed, how the deep cuts through his skin became light movie-star scars (a la Harrison Ford.) I mused with the doctors: if people were able to shut our brains off and rest as deeply for a month, would our modern stresses, our physical pains, illnesses, cancers diminish? We couldn’t know but in the conversation, we agreed it was likely. Because how seldom are we allowed deep rest? Even light rest doesn’t come cheap these days. Rest takes effort. What an oxymoron. Healing takes effort. It’s HARD to slow down and trust the process. Our whole society (and our shaky idea of self-worth) is designed to resist it.

But that doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. Just looking around, we can see that it is nature’s natural state to heal and grow stronger. Just look at your miraculous skin and all the bruises and cuts it has endured in your lifetime. Look at broken hearts that love again and bring everyone around them renewed smiles and hope. Look at cut rose bushes that continue to flourish, smelling more lovely every season. Look at lizards with their tails. Look at the daily over-comers we know personally: those who recreate their lives after tragedy we can’t imagine. Look at refugees who are forced to begin their dreams over….and survive. Look at little dogs who run on three legs (or even two…with wheels!) Look at the green shoot of grass that grows-against-odds through the pavement, the flower of peace in war.

It’s probably easier to marvel at all this mending-momentum around us, than it is to see it in ourselves. I suppose we are just too close to our own version of our story. We are too close to our own private wounds.  But we are all made from the same stuff! If we could only believe in ourselves the way we believe in each other….the way we believe in the smallest plants of our gardens (and those adorable dogs on wheels.)

Some time ago, I made this painting and called it The Seed Dreams of Flight. I was thinking about how long it seems to take to emerge from a dark place, a beginning place. But what if the long work is done under the surface, and suddenly, when the plant is ready for sunlight, it were to grow quickly, like an unstoppable vine? I imagined a budding seed, that perhaps is ingested by a bird, who then takes wing, as it would. The seed is redeposited back into the earth, having to start over yet again in the lonely dark soil—but even in its re-incubation, it remembers the echo of something higher, something brighter, so it holds on and lets the work happen. (Perhaps we even do this as babies, I really don’t know.) The seed remembers the air, it remembers sunlight, it remembers flying, it has a dream of the past and the future at once tucked into its core. It’s wired to grow, a dream of flight is in it’s ancient/new heart, even as it lays buried in earth and more earth. It won’t always be this way, but for now…it seems like forever. This may be stretching, but i think:  This is science. This is faith. This is healing. This is nature. This is us. All of us.

Here is a poem by the poet Wendell Berry (a farmer himself, so he would know):

The river takes the land, and leaves nothing.

Where the great slip gave way in the bank

and an acre disappeared, all human plans

dissolve. An aweful clarification occurs

where a place was. Its memory breaks

from what is known now, and begins to drift.

Where cattle grazed and trees stood, emptiness

widens the air for birdflight, wind, and rain.

As before the beginning, nothing is there.

Human wrong is in the cause, human

ruin in the effect—but no matter;

all will be lost, no matter the reason.

Nothing, having arrived, will stay.

The earth, even, is like a flower, so soon

passeth it away. And yet this nothing

is the seed of all—heaven’s clear

eye, where all the worlds appear.

Where the imperfect has departed, the perfect

begins its struggle to return. The good gift

begins again its descent. The maker moves

in the unmade, stirring the water until

it clouds, dark beneath the surface,

stirring and darkening the soul until pain

perceives new possibility. There is nothing

to do but learn and wait, return to work

on what remains. Seed will sprout in the scar.

Though death is in the healing, it will heal.

Seed will sprout in the scar. Sigh. Imagine that. For the new year, I wish you this: not only the healing of your wounds, but the belief that they are healing whether you feel it or not. And maybe: the willingness to put the time and the rest in to accelerate that growth. May it be a wonderfully surprising 2019 for us all!