The Dying Tree--and the Dove

Today as I tried to unpack and put away myriad items we'd brought back home with us from Arizona, I took a break about lunch time to go down to the basement patio to sit on the swing with my bare feet on the concrete patio, grounding.

 

I was thinking about having been told by more than one doctor or other person very recently that I should seek to find release for some emotions that are "offline," or stuck. 

A certain kind of scan was showing up emotional issues. 

Severe.

Emotions that are supposed to be expressed and then released, but which we've been taught, especially us conservative Christians, to not have in the first place, and if we have them, 

to for heaven's sake not express them. 

Emotions like anger, jealousy, fear, anxiety. 
I listened as I was told these emotions are "offline" for me. And causing issues.

(But don't you know those are carnal?) 

Forget the differing opinions and theologies. When you are fighting a terminal illness, a whole lot of stuff either surfaces or slides off--or both.

I was sitting there thinking about some of the intense stresses I've faced in the less-distant past, let's say from twenty years ago to eight years ago.

Stress beyond belief. 

Stuff.

No details, just memories of pain beyond belief, emotions that I couldn't describe or figure out, much less express except through anguished walks, sometimes wandering through the fields wondering if I was losing my mind. 

How could I keep from losing my mind?

Today I remembered those long, anguished days, months, and years, wondering how much of it was from my own mindset, my own upbringing, my own church background and teaching, my own physical issues, and who knows what.

It wasn't the time to cast blame on others.

And I sat there and sobbed.

I felt like I was throwing up a lot of stuff--dry heaves of pain and anguish, stresses and hurts and negative emotions.

I cried so hard that I couldn't cry very long.

It was all out. 

And then I sat there quietly, listening to the squeaking of the blade-less windmill creaking in the warm breeze.

I couldn't understand why it was a pleasant sound instead of annoying.

It reminded me, possibly, of wind chimes at other people's places that feel peaceful to me.

Could my own place of stress become peaceful to me?

 

As I looked up from my journal, I heard a sudden flutter, and there flew a dove--straight to the elm tree that we are afraid is dying of the fungal disease that is killing so many elm in our area, and possibly all through the country.  

The dove flew to a branch of the dying tree and sat there quietly, probably looking at me.

There had been doves in Arizona that reminded me of peace, and suddenly, there is one here in South Dakota, fluttering up to a tree branch and sitting there watching me--like the dying tree, waiting for the dove of peace to light on one of the branches of a broken heart.  

I let the dove alight.

There was peace.