Trampled Grass

I had a moment the other day.

There haven't been many to speak of lately (hence the two-month silence). There have been plenty "moments," but none worth speaking of.

This one, though, began as we stopped at a Starbucks off US Highway 69 two days ago. My husband ran inside for drinks and sandwiches, and I stuck my nearly-carsick head out my open door for fresh air. There it was. Spring. I could smell it rising off the trampled grass, drifting down from stormy clouds at long last. And for some reason utterly inconceivable, the first memory that flooded back to me was not an old treasured one, but one I hadn't thought of probably since the moment it happened 11 years ago.

College, end of sophomore year. One of the first nice days of the year. Outside Bethany Hall in the grass with a young woman who'd been a friend of mine early on freshman year and with whom I didn't spend time with nearly as much as I'd wanted to. But finally, there we were, with a blanket and a bucket of Chinese food, and I was thinking I'd never had chicken and broccoli in a garlic sauce before, and I'd also never had anything so good. It was the last time I ever spent time with her. We always smiled at each other if we crossed each others' paths, exchanged friendly hellos until I heard, several years later, that she'd moved to New Zealand. We're not even Facebook friends. That's how deeply we've lost touch, and yet, that's the thought that came to me when I first smelled Spring this year.

It reminded me of so many beginnings. What was probably a chance to refresh a meaningful friendship slipped through my apathetic fingers, just like that spring...just like most of that whole year. Things mean more now. Since then, I've had my heart shattered, as if dropped from some great height, and helplessly watched the pieces scatter across rambling, infinite space and into hopeless oblivion. Things I hung all my hope and confidence in went away--boyfriends, money, jobs, health, plans. Over the following ten years, I was stripped of most everything but a painful understanding of all I didn't understand, over and over again. I'd been granted the most precious blessings of my life in that time, too, and taught well (in the school of spiritually-knock-you-over-the-head-with-a-2-x-4) how to appreciate them.

And yet, Spring dawns again. For the tenth time since then. Another chance, another sweet hand extended from my Savior to me, offering my undeserved redemption yet again.