From the Desert to the Berry Patch

Each year we go to our favorite berry farm to pick our favorites -- gooseberries, boysenberries and raspberries.  EXCEPT last year, we weren't able to go.  With both of us suffering from severe sciatica and back pain, it seemed the better part of valor to stay home and anyway, we still had plenty of berries from the year before in our freezer.

Yesterday was a different story!

Breakfast was finished.

The convertible was packed for a picnic lunch and with berry baskets.

And we were ready to stain our hands with the delicious juices of those berries.

GO WEST, berry pickers!  GO WEST!

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And west we drove.  About 45 minutes from our home to a lovely place called West Union Gardens.  After we parked and had our containers weighed, we marched with determination into the lovely rows of berries -- row after row after row.

As we walked childish laughter could be heard.  Mamas calling them back closer, and we began to see the color of ripening berries.

Most important on our list of things to be picked were gooseberries, my husband's favorite pie making berry.  So, we found those and began picking the most luscious looking pink gooseberries. Pink, fat, juicy, big, delectable looking berries.  I kept asking how many do we want to pick, and he kept saying, "MORE!"

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Finally, we had enough gooseberries!

On to the boysenberries . . . .

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and what we found was extraordinary in its bounty.  Fat and juicy berries ready for picking.  Slipping into your hands and sometimes falling to the ground.  And ready for eating . . .  you can eat while you pick, you know.

Then it was time to take a break.  After all, we'd been at this for almost three hours.  We had our lunch under a large oak tree and once refreshed the last berries we wanted to pick called us back to the rows.

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The raspberries had just been opened, and there were so many!  It was as if a sea of raspberries stretched before us as far as the eye could see.


The berries were larger than any I'd ever seen!  And it seemed the berries wanted you to come close and pick them.  Again, they slipped right into your hand.  Often they too fell to the ground, and if you were lucky, you could snap that one up and put it into your bucket.

I heard a little one about three years old say to her mama, "Oh, look, mama.  Some of the berries falled down to the ground."  Her tiny voice sounded sad.

Dear reader, don't leave me yet.  I know you wonder where this is going.  And I have a wonderful message not just for you, but one that was meant for me yesterday.

For weeks, or so it seems, I've been traveling in the desert. I even mentioned to my husband that my writing had dried up, I felt parched and worn out, and I wondered why.  Of course, he had no answer for me.

Then, just by chance I reached out to my friend Nikki over at Simply Striving.  Nikki's post on Tuesday talked about discovering worship.  As I read it, I cried.  There was something there I needed and felt a hunger for.  Leaving a comment for Nikki, I told her where I was, or maybe wasn't.

Doing what good friends do best, Nikki reached back to me with a wonderful heartfelt prayer that you can read in her comments -- it may speak to your heart and needs as well.  I could feel something happening -- like an opening was being created.

Yesterday, while in the berry fields, breathing in His air, feeling His breeze, seeing and picking from His bounty, 

God nudged and said to me, "Daughter, where have you been?
Not nearly close enough lately."

"Father, I know.  Life's been so full and so busy with family, and you know, things."

He nudged again.  "How can life be full without Me?"

I hung my head, drew a breath,
and knew in an instant He was right, again.

It was I who had moved away.  Like the children running in the berry fields, I needed Him to call me back closer.  I needed to be nudged.

I wasn't taking time to acknowledge or draw close to Him.  Not the other way around.

I had created my own desert space.  

I had dehydrated my relationship with God.  

I am the one to take the step toward regaining my closeness with Him. 

[L]et us draw near to God with a sincere heart and with the full
assurance that faith brings, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us
from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water.Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess,
for he who promised is faithful.
Hebrews 10:22-23 (NIV)

Where are you today -- are you creating your own desert space, or are you clinging to that faith and hope we all profess and that He and He alone promises?

Journey of a Lifetime -- Installment 2

As the plane leveled out, I allowed my mind to wander back through time.  After all, the trip would take the better part of the day -- I could spend the hours meandering through memories.

My first concrete thoughts of childhood begin sometime around the age of two or three.  I can see her as clearly as if it was yesterday, her beautiful red hair cascading down her back.  And her eyes – they were so green; and when she was happy, they sparkled like jewels.  I could remember her lying across the bed with her hair hanging down and her eyes laughing as I brushed the red waves and curls.  What a favorite memory this was!  It was a time when we were the best of friends.  A happy daughter, a happy mother.  My world was filled with bliss!  But only occasionally.

Other memories were buried in a blanket of pain.  Those were the days when those same green eyes pierced my soul – filled with fire and anger.  Then, I felt her anguish, frustration, and bitterness.  But at such a young age, I didn’t understand those emotions and thought they were somehow directed at me, perhaps my fault.  I believed that every action or word she flew in my direction related to my failure to please her.  And beginning then, the words and actions became a mushrooming cloud that haunted me to this very day. 

How I still longed for something different – something that gave me what I wanted from her.  I wanted soft hands, loving words, sounds of affirmation, storybooks at bedtime, barefoot romps through fields of wildflowers.  What I didn't know was that she believed she gave me all those things and more.  She never realized what her words and actions translated into in my mind and heart.

As the plane moved me closer to home, I reflected on the times when I overheard words flung at my father.  Later I would see the hurt in his eyes and his actions, his withdrawal from all of us.  There were nights when her anger sent her flying out the door, dragging my younger brother and me behind her, driving feverishly through the city as if she were looking for something or someone.  But it was never clear to me just what she went racing through the streets to find.  Those nights came back with the same haunting fear they left me with in childhood – what or who were her ghosts? 

A panorama sped through my mind of those times when daddy was so sick that we thought he’d die, and I watched as she nursed him with such gentle, loving care.  The same was true when one of her children fell ill.  Then she became what I wanted every other day of the year.  Her hands caressed a feverish head and wiped away fretful tears, and she promised she would make it better.  And she did.  But then tomorrow always came, and every tomorrow was unpredictable. 

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As I retreated from the past and back to the present, I realized that decisions of the last few days had selected my traveling companion for me.  I was beginning a journey with someone I'd known all my life.  We'd traveled down many roads in our 50 plus years together.  Some paths remembered held delights; and others held emotions filled with pain, and some too painful to recall.  But recall them I must.  Some inner voice urged me to look deeper, to listen with a fine tuned ear, to walk closer for once.

My companion on this trip was my then 88‑year old mother.  In a period of less than a week, I had made the decision to move her across the country and in spite of the memories etched into my mind and soul which told me not to, the decision had somehow been so easy.  Our history contradicted the sensibility of my decision.  How could I please her now?  I'd never pleased her before.  How could I possibly think that I could make the right decisions for her, for me, for us?  After all, I'd lived a lifetime with criticism and harsh judgments. 

There it was again.  That inner voice that kept telling me this was right.  I heard it whisper, “You have no other choice.”  In spite of attempts to read or nap during my flight, that voice kept etching away at all my arguments against this decision.  And now, I need to share that voice and its meaning for me so that hopefully I can show you where it led me.  This last journey with my mother has become one of my greatest treasures. 

[Copyright 2011 by Sherrey Meyer.  All rights reserved.]