Life is Change

When they shot off the fireworks from the park in my hometown on the Fourth of July, we kids each grabbed a lawn chair and headed upstairs to my parents bedroom where there was a door out to an upstairs porch above our playroom at the back of the house.

We set up our chairs and watched the show from our own back porch. We ooh-ed and aah-ed as the brilliant colors zipped and whizzed and swirled across the sky until gravity took over, the sparkling remnants falling towards the ground.

Sometime while I was in high school, the playroom was used as part of the new kitchen add-on and the porch was no more. By then, the trees had become too tall and we couldn’t see the fireworks anymore anyway.

Life–the passing of time–changes everything.

Sometimes slowly, like when the trees grow over many years and obscure the view.

Sometimes quickly, like when you fall out of a tree and break your arm.

There is no way around it.

~~~

Growing up, it felt like nothing changed. As we got older, some of us went to college. Some of us joined the military. Some of us got married. Some of us had children.

Through it all, though, the circle–our little circle–stayed intact.

Mom, dad, the six of us kids, our house, the village we called home, the church we attended–they all stayed the same.

When someone left to pursue a dream or someone came home for a little respite from the world, when a job changed, when a new exchange student became part of our family, when we added a new spouse or child to the circle, it just felt like the natural course of events.

It felt right; it didn’t feel like change.

The circle remained unbroken–there were just more people in it to love.

~~~

It would be nice if things would actually stay the same for a while, but life isn’t designed that way.

Just look at the trees. They begin with a seed. They grow into saplings. As they grow older, they add more branches. Their roots grow deeper. They grow taller, stronger.

They are better able to withstand the storms that come along.

At some point, their health declines. When they die, what they leave nourishes what is left behind.

~~~

When our little circle started breaking–changing–it was devastating.

Sometimes you cry. And sometimes you move your desk into an old bedroom and call it an office and you decorate it with treasures from before, when you felt whole.

You decorate it with all those sparkling remnants that you were able to catch before they hit the ground.

And then you go in and close the door.

You try to make time stand still, and maybe it even does for a second.

And you try to make life feel unbroken and whole, like you think it should feel.

But it doesn’t work.

So we gather with those left in our circle–the loved ones in our life. We spend time together growing the branches and deepening the roots (knowing full well that someday, we’ll be breaking their little circles) in the hopes that what is left when we go will nourish those we leave behind.

~~~