2013 was a rough year. That was the year we lost our last baby. We had also just moved into our fourth rental in five years. My company was restructuring which meant transitions, layoffs, and a workload that was reproducing faster than bunny rabbits. It was a sad and stressful season of life. The only good news was we no longer had to pay a mortgage on our old house that was 175 miles away. After five years of lighting money on fire, that house finally sold.
Our new rental was on a golf course that backed up to a canyon river trail. That river trail quickly became my lifeline. Each break from work was spent with the gravel pebbles tussling beneath my feet. Squish squish squish.
There were countless tears and prayers spilled on that trail. I made the trek multiple times a day, no matter the weather. I used this time trying to make sense of the life pivot I was forced to accept. I wasn’t going to be a mama this side of heaven, and I was stuck working a job I was growing to detest.
This was not how my life was supposed to go.
Grief can be a time of extreme selfishness. I retreated inward to heal, but mostly to conceal my battle scars. I wasn’t ready to expose my childless badge to the world. I felt like a failure. It was during this hidden, selfish contemplation phase of life, that I first saw Elmer Fudd.
It was a cold blistery morning. Temperatures were below freezing and there was a sheet of ice on the ground. Not even the frozen tundra would deter me from my daily river walk though. Consumed by my own thoughts, and walking extra cautiously because of the ice and my natural klutziness, I passed by an elderly man walking with a cane on the trail. At the time this drew no alarm bells to me. I did notice that he had an Elmer Fudd hat on, and thus how I will always remember him.
A quarter of a mile later, I made it to the pedestrian bridge that went across the river; this was my turn around point. The river rapids below roused me from my emotional trance. My common sense had just woken up. That is when I realized I passed an elderly Elmer Fudd with a cane walking the frozen tundra, and that was not normal. How did this not register before? Why would Mr. Fudd be walking this isolated canyon river trail, on a sheet ice, with a cane?
I turned around for my walk home, now on high alert. I was embarrassed that my own self centeredness had blinded me to this Elmer Fudd hazard . I walked the rest of trail looking for him. Was he okay? My eyes scouring the brush on the edge of the river, did he fall in? Surely I walked faster than an old man with a cane? My amateur tracking skills revealed no evidence of this elusive Elmer Fudd. It was as if he evaporated into thin air. At least that was my theory until I met him again on the same river trail a few weeks later. We quickly became walking buddies.
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Now more than a decade later, I happened to be in that same area of town, with some time to kill. I decided to walk my old canyon river trail once more. I thought it would be therapeutic to retrace those hard steps from my past. Squish squish squish.
I was struck by how much more lush and robust the trees and brush had become. With time, their roots got deeper, and the landscape had grown into its full potential. It was now sturdy and mature… Much like what has happened to me in the last decade of my life.
I am reminded of a beautiful Bible verse when God spoke these words to the Israelites, His chosen people, during one of their several exiles.
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For I am about to do something new.
See, I have already begun!
Do you not see it?
I will make a pathway through the wilderness.
I will create rivers in the dry wasteland.
Isaiah 43:19 NLT
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To my mamas stuck on the hard canyon river trails of your life, in emotional exile and held captive by your grief, I say this:
Keep going!
Change happens with each deliberate step.
One day, I pray you too will be able to revisit your old trail/trial and see how much you have grown.
Squish squish squish.
