(Trigger warning: mention of child death, but not actual! Just as a basis for comparison)

My husband and I are blessed with one biological child: a nearly-eighteen-year-old, tall, handsome, responsible, kind, gentle young man. I may be a bit biased, but he really does seem to be a good guy. I love that boy with all my Zach-loving heart! That has 100% not changed, nor will it likely ever.

….And yet, thinking back on his infancy & childhood, returning my mind to snuggling with him, breastfeeding him, carrying him around, laughing and playing with that little boy…. That’s all definitely gone, never to be retrieved. It’s just as well that our young adult progeny doesn’t require breastfeeding or carrying, goodness knows! We’re proud of his achievements in the various aspects of his life, not the least of which is his ability to nourish himself and get himself around, not only within the house but now from one suburb or city – or state – to the next; and we wouldn’t change a thing about him, really…… 

It’s just that it hurts. I blessedly haven’t experienced a child of mine dying – praise be to God! I hope I never will, and my heart aches for those who have; but it occurs to me that this transformation from little child to grown (nearly) adult is akin to that. The baby that we knew, the toddler, the rambunctious preschooler, the inquisitive, parent-adoring, question-asking schoolboy, he’s definitely gone. We weathered the holier-than-thou phase of adolescence and, I’m happy to say, appear to be on the other side of that: Zach really is such a sweet young man, and I very much love sharing hugs and kisses and laughs and insights with his nearly-adult self. I wouldn’t trade him for the world! ..I just mourn the loss of my sweet little boy, sometimes. 

“People who have applied the teachings of the church from the Word directly to their lives are in the inmost heaven and more than anyone else are absorbed in the pleasures of wisdom. They see divine realities in particular objects. They actually do see the objects, but the corresponding divine realities flow directly into their minds and fill them with a sense of blessedness that affects all their sensory functions. As a result, everything they see seems to laugh and play and live.” (Heaven and Hell 489.3, emphasis added)

I remember reading this passage as part of my Logopraxis study last year. That last line grabbed me, it’s captivating! “Everything they see seems to laugh and play and live.” How jovial! I want to see the world around me laugh and play and live!

When I walk with my dog in the woods, I relish the feeling of being engulfed in nature. I love it! I love being surrounded by the greens and browns and yellows of grasses, leaves, vines, mosses, trees and logs, the gray rocks, the blue and pink and purple and yellow and orange wildflowers, the dark earth….  It’s all beautiful to the eye, which is a blessing, to be sure! But it doesn’t really feel like it is joyful and laughing, to me. I hear many birds in the trees above my head: some of their sounds could certainly be interpreted as laughter! Colourful flowers, maybe I could pretend that they look cheerful; lush grasses and moist, verdant trees, maybe…. but rocks? Roots? Soil? Nope; I’m not seeing it.

Reflecting on this, straining to envision these inanimate, dead-looking objects as laughing, playful and living, it occurs to me: personifying nature may be my mistake. The natural world around us may be living, but it isn’t human, it isn’t a person. None of it has feelings or a higher consciousness (well, depending on who you ask, but that’s a deep-dive for another day!). Nature can’t laugh, play and live the way we laugh, play and live; I reckon that thinking of it as responding, reacting as we do, is misguided.

About a year and a half ago I shared an article here titled ’Walking in the Light’ (Nov 16, 2022). In it I mused about walking along the sidewalk in the morning sun, eyes completely shut, absorbing the sunshine and trusting in the Lord’s guidance, basking in His love and wisdom. Ahh, that was an idyllic time! Those walks were so nice, and the insights were even more delightful.

I’ve been ‘walking in the light’ pretty much every day since then, too – literally, engaging in that practice of walking with my eyes shut on that stretch of sidewalk. It’s been nice, peaceful, uneventful,……….

……That is, until I walked smack into a telephone pole, on a morning walk one week before Christmas 2023! 😮

No joke. I hit that thing hard, too: I wasn’t going very fast (I was walking with my eyes shut, after all; I may be dumb, but I’m not that dumb!), and I feel like I briefly felt the pole with my hands – I didn’t hold them up in front of me, they were just casually hanging by my side, but somehow I think I touched the pole in front of me with my hands? I mentally acknowledged that there was a telephone pole there,.. and yet apparently this message didn’t make it as far as the rest of my body, because my forehead hit that telephone pole with a mighty whack! I took a step back and kind of shook it off, chuckling at myself (in part for the benefit of any onlookers 😬 – of which I don’t think there were any, but just in case..), but even as I walked the remaining 5 minutes – not even?! – to my house, I could see the welt ballooning over my left eye, beginning to obstruct my vision. I applied arnica cream as soon as I got home (after taking some pictures, for posterity’s sake, y’know), and the goose egg actually did subside as the day wore on! ….I didn’t think to apply the cream around my eye, however, and I didn’t anticipate the blood sinking down and pooling around my eye socket,…. I don’t know if it would’ve made a difference, if I’d slathered it with cream, but I ended up with a black eye. 🙄 Even now, nearly two months later (at the time of writing), there’s no lingering outward sign of trauma – thankfully! – but I can still feel slight tenderness and a bit of a lump over my left eyebrow.

Have you ever found yourself among lots of strangers, either all at once, in one place, or one after another, after another? I’m guessing that you probably have, at some time or other. Does it make you shudder, or give you the chills?

Not everyone would be bothered by scenarios like these, but I’m a relatively introverted person, not especially inclined towards crowds of unknown people, so when faced with situations like those – even just thinking about it – I feel myself recoiling, sinking into myself. There are different variables, mind you: if I can just be around them, on the outside looking in, not expected to interact with them, I’m fine; or, if I’m with someone else that I can buddy up with, I’m pretty ok. If I’m on my own, though, and in a situation that calls for extensive interpersonal interaction,…. my palms start sweating and I start looking for the nearest exit. (I get through it, but I don’t enjoy it!)

I had opportunities to deal with this when my family and I first moved overseas, as you might imagine. Getting to know the folks in the small church society was fine, but venturing out into the outside world, where I didn’t know a soul and didn’t know whether I had anything in common with anyone, and I felt like a foreigner, an outsider, I was a little less than perfectly comfortable. “Deep breaths, Jenn, deep breaths….”

I distinctly remember one of the tactics I used, when we first got here and I was first venturing out: I reminded myself that, when it comes down to it, everybody poops. I don’t mean to be crass, it isn’t like I envisioned people going to the toilet, it was just a reassuring notion to think that, even that tough-looking guy over there, the one who looks like he could beat me to a pulp without much effort? (gulp!) – He poops, just like the rest of us. That stuck-up woman behind the counter at the shop? She poops. It elicited a little up-tick at the corner of my mouth as I chuckled inwardly, it’s true; it helped me relax into my new environment, confident that, although I was very new and ‘green’, we were all actually on the same playing field, deep down. (I suppose this strategy is probably akin to the public speaking ‘picture your audience naked’ tactic?….)