(This song is #134 on my playlist. I have autoplay turned off again, but if you want to listen to it while you read this, just scroll all the way down to the bottom of my blog, select song 134, and hit the forward arrow)
There is a season
turn, turn, turn
And a time to every purpose under heaven.
It took me a long time to find a purpose for the heart numbing loss I felt when I moved away from my old farmstead.
I threw away calendar after calendar trying to make sense of all those years of pain. I carried my anguish with me so constantly that the passage of years began to not matter. The only thing that mattered was the isolation the torment of my memories created.
I lost my joy…and in the process I put aside many things I loved to focus on survival...to focus on trying not to feel anything. Allowing myself to feel meant I allowed myself to be open to pain.
turn, turn, turn
I didn’t paint. I didn’t write. I didn’t garden. My guitar gathered dust along with friendships that were once important. I feared that all the creativity and happiness inside me had withered and died. I feared that doing things I once loved with people I once cared about would make me feel even worse.
So I hid inside myself in panic of being diminished into even more broken and brittle pieces…
…certain in the contest of life suffering, I would at least be awarded a bronze medal.
I lamented where I felt forced to live.
Green trees to cactus…lush gardens to arid landscaping…fireflies to nights devoid of any flicker of bliss.
Until I finally grew so weary of and so sick of my own misery that it at last became time to gather my stones together…
… to make a garden. My season of grief was finally coming to an end.
I planted seeds and watched them wither and die in the intense desert heat.
My gardens failed.
I planted again.
And felt myself turn, turn, turning toward despair.
How could I live in a place with no cleansing summer rains? With heat so awful it melted my shoes? With so many people everywhere that there was no air left for me to breathe?
turn, turn, turn
I forced myself to ask for help and learned how to plant seeds in the desert.
A time to build up
A time to break down
A time to dance
A time to mourn
A time to cast away stones
A time to gather stones together.
In spite of advice to the contrary, I tried planting all the things I loved and missed from my Ohio gardens…the lilacs, the larkspur, and the peonies. They withered and died.
Finally, with little hope of success I threw a packet of zinnia seeds into my little garden.
I watered them and they sprouted.
Ironically, I had always tried to grow zinnias in Ohio, but after their first bloom they would become sickly and the plants would die.
I had little hope for my tender zinnia seedlings, but I continued to water and fertilize them until one glorious day they burst into technicolor bloom.
I cut them and they bloomed again. And again!
I filled old pottery jugs with their bounty. To me there is nothing happier than a big bouquet of crayon colored zinnias.
As time passed, I learned to grow other things in the desert…luscious tomatoes and sweet, sweet onions, spires of hollyhock and tender-faced pansies, but always a large part of every garden was devoted to the cheerful brightness of zinnias.
To everything…
turn, turn, turn
There is a season
turn, turn, turn
And a time to every purpose under heaven.
There is no expiration date on grief…
No timetable to finding our purpose again.
And when grief and sadness come to visit next, as they surely will, I will remind my heart that one day I will be able to gather zinnia blossoms again into a bright bouquet of delight.
And I will, again…
Turn, turn, turn…
This is my final post in the Farmstead series for Alphabe-Thursday.
Z is for Zinnias. To read other Z posts, just click here.
I've often written that the telling begins the healing. Writing this little series really helped me focus on how far I've come since those years. I still miss that glorious house...but someday I will live in a place like that again. "Stories don't mean anything, if you've got no-one to tell them to..." Thank you for indulging my little sentimental journey here.
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