There Is a Place I Know…
Several years ago I accompanied our children on a youth trip to the mountains in North Carolina. We hiked and climbed a mountainside and as I watched these many teenagers fly by me non-stop up the steep incline, I felt my heart pounding in my head and I was beyond parched. Breathless, I had to stop and rest many times along the way. I remember my eldest son’s concern for me that his forty-something momma would have a heart attack right there on the mountain and tumble to the bottom. He stayed with me, sacrificing the fast pace of his friends to make sure I was okay. He may not remember this but I will always remember his love that day. I found out then how out of shape I was and thought “next time they will ask a younger chaperone to come along.”
Well, I made it to the top and somewhere along the trail was an oasis of a waterfall where thousands of tiny purple butterflies rested on tree trunks or flitted about like tiny Tinkerbells. It was a magical place where I rested among the butterflies. When I returned home, sometime after the trip, I imagined this painting and it came to be more as a remembrance than a realistic rendering…no that wasn’t really me, a naked nymph, in the waterfall! But symbolically, she was a part of me, an ideal, better version of a woman, refreshed, her thirst quenched by the Holy Spirit, communing with her God.
Sometimes the soul just thirsts, sometimes it knows not for what, yet thirst it does. The void gets filled with all the wrong things sometimes and if there is too much dryness there is the risk of brittleness that can make a twig snap or a bruised reed break. I know this thirsting and have found the only answer for me to avoid prolonged droughts in the soul to be found in the unconditional love of God. ”There is a place I know where healing springs now flow. Over rocks hear the water spill, in the center all is still.” (This song I wrote long before was in my mind as I painted and the full lyrics I will post another day.)
Snippets and Snatches 