Back to the Wonder

He grew up in the north on the banks of a cold, pristine Michigan lake, surrounded by tall old pines. I grew up in the country, on dirt roads and rolling acres of wheat grass. Two kids, worlds apart, living, loving, and learning about life in the beauty around us. Thirty years later, pulled by the pressures of adulthood and obligation, he goes inside four smog laden walls with the loud pumping and pounding of monster like machines banging away in his ear drums and his consciousness for 10-12 hours-day after day. Breathing fumes, listening to men who stand around and talk about the lives they have thrown away, year after year, just existing… waiting until they turn 65 so they can start living. It makes him drown a little each day, thinking he won’t make it out.

I can’t breathe. How can I rescue him Lord? How can I rescue the boy with the silken black hair that I fell in love with when I was sixteen? How can I rescue us from lives of meaningless churning? When we are young, we dream of overcoming the smallness of our world. We try so hard to run from who we are and where we came that we forget the Wonder. At sixteen, he kissed me during the slow skate at the Rollerama. Three dates later, we decided we never wanted to be away from each other. Two kids, dreaming of sharing our lives, a house, a couple of children and a nice car.

When we are old, we long to return home. Life is about this crazy circle… growing our wings, learning to fly and leaving the nest—only to return home years later—to the safe place…

“Dear Lord, you know my past, you know my present, and you know my future. Please guide me in my daily life choices, as my desire is to walk toward you. Let me be at peace with my mistakes. Thank you for picking me up and dusting me off when I have failed, felt defeated, discouraged or ashamed. Amen.“

When I was a child, there was a patch of pines on the property next to our farm. I used to walk barefoot through them, needles piled onto the forest bed, making the path soft for my feet. I often laid my head down in the middle of this small forest, breathing in the smell of the pines and looking up through the holes the branches made to the sky. When it rained, I put on my yellow rain coat, carried my yellow diary, and took shelter under the forest canopy, writing and dreaming. Miles away, there was a boy wearing a red flannel shirt, rambling his way through the forest. We didn’t know then that our lives would intersect and that one day we would walk through the pines together.

All these years later, hundreds of miles from our separate pasts, away from the comfort of our nesting places, having traveled the world, built and lived in big houses with big mortgages, raised two children into adulthood, we long to return to the safe places we once knew. We long to overcome the smallness of our world. Overcome the smallness of a world that says that men should spend forty years inside four walls to earn a living. The smallness of a world that drowns a man a little each day, making him lose sight of the beauty of his life, the dreams he dreamed as a child, the things that gave him joy.

When we are old, we long to return home. Full circle… growing our wings, learning to fly, we return to the safe place… the Creator of Wonder, the One who is Peace, who dusts us off when we have failed, and picks us up when we want to come home—landing us safely back in our nests—dirt roads, wheat grass and pines.