Reminders

Cardinal flits across the road, flash of red sticks out among muted brown and gray. Cardinals stay through the winter, through the cold, the barren, the unyielding hard.

I am to do the same.

Water. It calls to me after being cooped up for weeks. I make the short drive to my old college campus, wave to the young girl at the welcome desk kiosk, wind the narrow road that wraps around the lake.

Today, a tired sun is making its way through milky clouds. It lights the world nonetheless. There are shadows cast along the damp grass, my body outlined on the row of rock arched around the bluff. Clamor of metal hitting together of the new business building construction echoes behind me—this campus sure is growing.

Water and sky blur together from the haze, gray foam of cloud barely atop a steel teal of lake—everything seems washed. From somewhere at the bottom of shoreline, soft waves roll to land. Dead prairie grass leans along the sloped bluff, tan and brittle. Long, spindly arms of empty ash trees hold their perch along the ledge.

It’s quiet, and I am alone the day after Christmas. A few hours ago, I unstrapped the four lead electrodes from my chest and abdomen, shut off the phone monitor, packed up the Holter unit and dropped the box at the UPS store in the Pavilions shopping center two minutes from my parents’ house. It will be on its way to Illinois to be processed, results calculated. I don’t know when I’ll learn if they noticed an arrythmia, maybe at my cardiologist appointment in January. I’m again in full trust mode as I acknowledge God as my monitor, His watchful gaze on my heart, on my head.

Another phase down, another step towards healing, or answers, or living in the unknown.

We all live in the unknown, really. Every day. Who ever knows what comes?

Curled leaves lie at my feet, half covered by the overgrown grass. Hints of previous seasons making themselves known well into winter.

There are always reminders of where we’ve been, who we were. They trail behind us quietly, catching hold of the wind to make no sound. Sometimes they pull ahead, catch on our sneakers so we stop to see what’s changed our stride, peel them off and examine all that has transpired, how we have transformed.

Keep watch for the good. Count each detail as a keepsake. Always remember. Taupe, pointed leaves nestled in the grass. Calm of Lake Michigan floating in its own movement. Break of spindled sun, light cutting through days of clouds.

Heart free from its surveillance, no more metal monitor heavy on my breastbone. Every day a miracle. Every miracle, great grace.