Apparently, fentanyl makes you chatty.
____________________
I roll over to look at the river. Instead, a miniature herd of raindrops grazing on the window obscure my view. I gingerly force my body over on its back and invite Steve in for a warm snuggle where the heating pad has grown cold.
And I begin to organize my thoughts.
Although there is no organizing of words and mind this week.
I have never been punched in the gut, but I know now how it would feel.
The command to hold perfectly still was quickly forgotten as the happy syrup poured through. I remember having much to say about so many things. However, I am not completely certain of the language I used.
A liver biopsy is not nothing. A tiny poke, I thought. But seven surgical steel inches penetrating leave a more significant invisible mark than what is obvious on skin.
What is unseen is a moving target, rabid and insistent in its intention to nest in.
Yet, I am more formidable in my determination—
undaunted, unrelenting, unmoved.
What is seen is life advancing.
A life-force fueled by pumpkins vined together like family,
spread wide and breathtaking in an open field.
I am medically admonished not to lift more than ten pounds this week. But the clays and whites, variegated greens and yellows, and creams call to me in this Autumn harvest of pumpkins, new baby, and a bride-to-be.
Like words, wild and meandering post-surgery, life winds its way through exquisite and treacherous fields, mud sticky and demanding on hands and feet.
A remembrance of good and hard not easily washed away.
Where has your own life traveled that you never intended to go?
Love. Healing. Wholeness. Vines twisting and connecting. Sometimes producing. Sometimes at rest.
Yet always seeking—
Like hearts imperfect and needy.
Like hands burying seed.
Like tiny buds becoming.
Like veins and vines transporting life.
Sometimes the harvest takes only a season.
Sometimes it requires the revelation of ten years.
But if we are patient and trusting,
the harvest eventually comes, though what is gathered may come as a surprise.
The Maker is at work in every season.
Even when the promise of the harvest lies buried beyond our sight.
NOTES
SOUL MAP
the unseen → the wound → the field → vines → seasons → waiting → ten years → harvest → the Maker → HERE
Our youngest son asked his girlfriend of ten years to marry him amongst the apples falling from the trees and the pumpkins ripe on the vine.
A decade of growing alongside one another. Of seasons arriving and departing.
And then, in a field celebrating the harvest, a question arrives.
There is something profoundly moving to me about the timing.
This week, my own body underwent another investigation into what has been growing unseen. A liver biopsy. Another attempt to understand what is taking place beneath the surface.
Elsewhere, the evidence of another kind of growth was impossible to miss—
A new baby. A promise of marriage. Pumpkins spreading across the fields, their vines reaching in directions no one could have plotted when the seeds first entered the ground.
Just imagine all the seasons that preceded this one—
The ones that looked abundant.
The ones that appeared barren.
The long stretches when nothing seemed to be happening at all—
The absence of visible fruit is not necessarily the absence of life.
The Maker knows what is happening beneath the soil.
REFLECTION
What season of your life are you living in?
One of abundance, when the evidence of growth is everywhere? Or one in which you are still looking for the smallest indication that something planted long ago has taken root?
Have you ever mistaken a season of waiting for a season in which nothing was happening?
Think of something beautiful in your life today that required more time than you imagined it would.
What was growing in the years before you could recognize it?
And what about the seasons you would rather forget? The ones that felt unproductive, interrupted, or painfully uncertain?
Is it possible that something was being cultivated in you even then?
A vine rarely travels in a straight line. It reaches, turns, encounters obstacles, finds another direction. And sometimes it bears fruit far from where it was planted.
Where has your own life traveled that you never intended to go?
What unexpected beauty have you discovered there?
And where are you still trying to persuade the Maker that the harvest should have arrived by now?
Perhaps the question is not whether you have waited long enough.
Perhaps it is whether you can trust the work of His hands while so much of it remains unseen.
DROP YOUR PINS
what I planted → what I expected → the seasons that passed → what I couldn't see → the unexpected turn → what has grown → what I entrust to the Maker → HERE
Or perhaps yours begins in a season that has yet to reveal its purpose.
the waiting → the uncertainty → the hidden work → the winding vine → the faith to remain → the harvest yet unseen → HERE
Or perhaps yours begins somewhere else.
_____ → _____ → _____ → _____ → _____ → _____ → HERE
YOU ARE HERE.
Image: Two new Krafts—The first, our precious grandson, Knox Jame, born to our middle son [Cameron] and his wife, Mia. The second, the fiancée of our youngest son [Quinn], the future Mrs. Karla Kraft.
