They say there’s a storm rolling in.
The evening air is damp and filled with sounds of songbirds and shifting breezes. I sit and wait.
I so enjoy watching the front as it makes its way across the lake. Wind rises. Water patterns change.
Until then I will linger here and breathe it all in.
And write.
Of fronts. Of beginnings.
As a lover of nature, there are a great many opportunities to observe new life in springtime. Certainly exquisite examples of beginnings.
I am mystified by plants and marvel at the cycles of weather that hold it all together.
The way that water continually moves on, above and beneath the earth. Nitrogen that moves through the atmosphere, permeates the soil and is transferred into the water table. Carbon cycles. Photosynthesis.
It is all so miraculous and magical to me.
I am also enamored with stories.
More beginnings.
The starts of God moving in a life.
He was just sixteen years old when he left home.
Never graduated high-school.
It was a matter of survival, really. Leaving behind his home and family. But mostly and intentionally, a father so cruel and abusive that running away was his only hope.
The man whose DNA he carried, once kicked him so hard that he was hurled down an entire flight of stairs. His body crashing on the landing below ~ leaving him in shock, and excruciating pain. A broken tailbone.
Who could do such a thing to a child?
Only a monster it seems.
(Or…perhaps a father who had gone before in the throes of unthinkable harm himself.)
Generations of hatred, evil was poured out to saturate a child’s vulnerable heart. Steeped deep into the soul of this young man. Brewing for years in a monsoon of distrust and desperation.
This battered and wounded warrior ~ my (ex) father-in-law.
…
I can’t begin to imagine the rage and terror that surged through his veins for all of those years as he withstood the beatings. Time and time again as he watched his mother helpless at the end of an angry fist. His siblings in the midst of it all.
Our lives on this earth were never meant to be this way.
Today he is 67 years old.
And even after all these years, those old wounds still seep poison from time to time. Bleeding into his memory.
The cycles of hurt.
Of abuse.
Of guilt.
The cycle that perpetuated for a good portion of his life as he tried to be a father to his own son. Horribly failing. Leaving marks on the generation to follow. A legacy of crippling sin.
How does someone wade through the hurt of such tremendous grief to find his way?
As he walks through this life, he carries the pain of the past with him.
Physical and emotional scars.
His back constantly aching. A reminder of the malicious man who ran the family home with seizing rage. Controlling hatred. And a fire of fury.
The man who broke him.
Broke his body.
Broke his spirit.
…
When the circumstances of life are beyond belief, how do we find the strength to lift our heads and begin again?
James 5: 10-11
As an example of suffering and patience, brothers, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. Behold, we consider those blessed who remained steadfast. You have heard of the steadfastness of Job, and you have seen the purpose of the Lord, how the Lord is compassionate and merciful.
Each of us walk through this world with our own pain from the past.
Conscious or sub-conscious.
We carry yesterday’s burdens into today’s beginning.
But how do we start over?
When the weight of defeat is on our back.
When the vacuum of loneliness seems to swallow us whole.
When the fire of anger burns our throat and eats holes in our heart.
Or the sadness envelops us almost to asphyxiation, and life starts to fade-to-black.
…
It is in our human nature to tend toward the carrying of our pain. In this fallen world, we will forever find ourselves latching onto the hardships.
Tightening the yoke.
This is the curse.
Our Creator knows this yet He loves us with an unfailing and merciful love.
That is why He sent us a Savior.
Someone’s hand to hold who can lead us to freedom from this sometimes miserable and unbearable physical existence.
When we choose Christ, we can find a way out of the pain.
He invites us beyond the limitations of our understanding.
For it is in our Savior’s nature to release.
To deliver.
To liberate.
To set-free.
He exempts us from the chains of evil that have choked out the goodness of life. He grants reprieve from the bindings of blame. He exonerated us, leaving our hearts innocent and clean once again.
…
Like the weather that binds all of nature: the sun, the rain, the earth ~ our Father God was binding our story together even back then.
Through the pain.
Through the heartache.
And now as our stories unfold, He continues to weave the fabric of our years. He is interlacing the experiences, the people and the lessons.
In our sinful tendencies we often fall short. We forget our true beginnings in Him. And we need often be reminded of His power and grace.
Our God IS the beginning and the end.
He redeems all things. Makes beauty from ashes. Changes water into wine.
And if we patiently wait and watch…we can see such mercies happening in our midst.
The miraculous work of our Heavenly Father.
I am but a traveler on this journey with my father-in-law.
In astonishment, I watch how God is using my Sweet Louise to extend grace to her grandfather. To bring him closer to home ~ this man of inconceivable beginnings.
We have seen him reach out to Emma in these past few years in genuine love.
A palpable longing for connection.
We visit periodically throughout the year. And each time he reveals a little bit more of his past.
Of his pain.
You can start to see inside the soul of this man ~ once a boy filled with hurt. With lonely. And lost.
Decades later, now seeking a new beginning.
All through his growing years, he tried to measure up to the expectations that befell him. To prove wrong the words that emphatically claimed his defeat. Valiantly striving to combat the voices that shredded his self-esteem.
To find a sense of adequacy.
I often wonder what it feels like for him.
With only one son and one granddaughter, does mortality lurk in the dark reminding him that once he is gone the family name goes with him?
The legacy comes to a close.
Is he living the amends with Emma that he feels like he owes his son? That his father owed him? To right all the wrongs that were done?
Such a debt can never be paid by human striving.
But this is what we do in our futile attempts to escape the discomfort that accompanies our walk of this earthly life.
We try to alter the course of conflict.
To re-route the path of pain.
Despite the struggles and the constant despair that have infused his days, he has accomplished so very much.
Words I would use to describe him today are ~
Driven.
Responsible.
Courageous and resourceful.
Disciplined.
Talented.
Dependable and kind.
…
These qualities emerging from a soul that was burned and barren.
Only the work of our God could manage such a transformation.
Ezekiel 11:19
I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them; I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh.
…
Watching from the outside, I can see God leading this wandering soul back to His arms.
I believe that He is using Emma as a light for her grandfather. For with her he finds unconditional love in the bloodline. Something he’s been searching for all his life.
And with his precious granddaughter, there is a generation between his painful past and the present.
Breathing space.
An air of absolution.
Christ in us is the extension of grace and compassion into the suffering and cruelty of this world.
I pray that her beautiful and radiant heart in Him can illuminate his path. That he might find his way home.
Find his way back to peace.
To Jesus.
By His glory I see redemption unfold in their relationship. The healing of old and bitter wounds. The mending of broken spaces in a lineage past.
Such is the beauty in the all-consuming love of Christ!
As I finish this piece, crickets sing in harmony with the warm, gentle rains beginning to fall. A refreshing reminder of the waters that connect everything in nature.
And the God who created it all.
The glorious gift of His redemption ~ a washing away of the past.
The silhouettes of two herons pass silently overhead. Lightning bursts illuminate the darkened sky along the horizon.
The rain begins.
…
My Sweet Louise 
Please share your thoughts.