forging a path

I’ve been working on creating a path around my little piece of property. I love being in nature and I love walking and I love getting time to myself so what better way to accomplish all of those things than to forge a path around my yard?

I have a half acre to work with which is plenty of room for me.

There’s only one section of my yard that is woodsy and requires real forging. It backs up to a little strip of forest and a railroad track. I love this little strip of forest and I knew I wanted my path to go through it.

Along this path I’ve encountered some obstacles like a venomous snake, invasive tree roots, and a fallen tree.

I’ve had to work pretty hard to clear out a lot of things in just a short distance, and boy is it taking a while.

This corner of my yard in particular has been challenging. I soon discovered, after moving here, that this wooded area was a dumping ground for a previous owner. I’ve discovered t-shirts, car parts, disintegrating plastic tarps and pots, cables, pipes, and long metal wires… You name it. All kinds of garbage has been tossed into the woods to decay.

The more I try to clear out this area, the more layers of junk I find.

There are so many broken things buried under years of leaves and pine needles.

As I continue to uncover layers of dirty garbage I’m reminded of the path that is my life. I feel as though I’ve arrived at a place where the layers of garbage continually appear.

The more raking or clearing that I do, the more brokenness I find. Some of the garbage has been there so long that roots have grown through it or it’s broken into a hundred tiny pieces and feels impossible to clean up.

Today as I dig up this garbage both in my yard and in my life, I have to ask myself, why am I doing this? Why am I spending all of this time pulling up roots and picking up hundreds of tiny shards of glass?

I keep thinking, I just want to enjoy my path. I want to spend my time walking on it. Then I think of how much easier it would be to just go around the garbage. Just leave it. Let it be buried in the woods and just keep my path out in the grass where there’s no need to clear anything.

This particular area of my yard and my life is an area full of trash that I didn’t put there. Part of me wants to complain about it and refuse to work on the mess I didn’t make. But like it or not this is my land now and I can choose to let it rot or I can take the time to clean it up.

So I stick with it. Why? Because of beauty.

The forest is more beautiful than the grass. And beauty is powerful. Beauty makes me feel things. Deep things. Important things.

It’s impossible for me to look at the stunning colors in a sunset and not also feel something. It’s impossible for me to hear a beautiful song and not also feel something. I can’t scoop up my children in my arms, hear their precious voices say “I love you mommy” and not feel.

Beauty is a sad sort of feeling. Like a longing in my soul. Like the feeling is too great for the moment. The sun will set, the song will end, my children will grow up. I think it’s a longing for eternity. It reminds me of a quote from C.S.Lewis:

"The fact that our hearts yearn for something Earth can't supply, is proof that Heaven must be our home."

Yet even with all this dissatisfaction and unquenched yearning, somehow it’s still worth it to feel.

I want that feeling, the one that the beauty of the forest provides. I’m not just clearing a path, I’m restoring nature to its intended glory. There is great purpose in that.

I know God is doing the same with my life.

He could leave the garbage where it’s at. He could let life bury it and hide it and I could just go around it. But I want my life to be beautiful. I want to flourish and grow like the forest. Things are alive in there. Interesting things. Beautiful things. Things that belong there, that deserve to grow, because he planted them.

Something else I have discovered about this area of my yard is that, not all of the buried things are garbage. Every once in a while, in my trail blazing, I find a buried brick, and I think:

Ah, something I can build with.

And so I have. I’ve built things with the bricks and the pavers I’ve found. Most of them have been broken but it hasn’t stopped me.

I’ve found every single one of these broken pavers and bricks in my yard.

Look at it now.

I want that to be said of me.

Look at her now. Look at what God did with all of that brokenness.

So I will be patient, as the layers of dirt reveal more garbage, more brokenness. I will keep pressing on until the work is done.

I may come across an invasive tree with roots that go deep. I may come across that scary venomous snake that likes to hide in the woods. (Seriously, you guys think it’s a metaphor for Satan and it is but I really have tried to kill a water moccasin back there and he got away). I may come across fallen trees or broken glass but whatever I come across, it will be worth the beauty of the forest.

May the beauty in me cause people to feel. I want to be that taste of eternity. The proof that we’re meant for more.

What path are you on? What ways can God use your brokenness to create something beautiful?