Palm Trees and Elbows and Thoughts on Persevering

Back at it, here on my stool in the Straight Up Café where I just met a beautiful young woman from Syria named Niveen. She has only been in America for a short while, but she's working and enduring and plugging into life here with all her heart. Now she has met Tim, who I can see studying in the back office, working on his masters for ministry. It sure looks like there are good things in store.

Glancing around the room at my writers' group I can't help but wonder how many miles we've traveled in the last week? What sort of challenges and trials have we all faced in these seven days? Lord, help us to learn and find strength here as we share our stories with one another. So many stories here and every one has such value in your eyes!   

Coming back to the same sturdy table can be like coming back to touch base in a baseball diamond, or coming to a holy pause in church each week. This is how I feel when I go to sit on the beach at the ocean. There is something that hasn’t changed though I’ve been bouncing around or getting tossed around like the branches of a tree in hurricane season. There is an anchor for the soul.  

I remember the palm trees in the D.R. when I walked there with Frank. He was fighting for his life, his head full of brain tumors and I was blinking back tears. “Oh God, how much longer do we have together?”

We had walked on so many beaches together over the years. I’d known him 34 years since we started dating when I was sixteen. We had traveled in so many places. Cities, towns, school, jobs, having babies, celebrating birthdays and holidays and vacations and…   marking every milestone with a dinner or a party.

Now this?

The wind blows and the palms somehow cling to the sand.

Soft, white, movable sand! How do they do it?

I looked again as we walked and suddenly my eyes were opened. Look at the angle of these palm trees! They lean way out over the water and then suddenly turn at a sharp right angle and grow straight up into the air! What force of nature could make a tree bend in the middle like an elbow and then continue on its path toward the light?

Maybe these trees actually began to topple when they were younger and weaker. Maybe they were ready to be uprooted and let go of their feeble grasp, but the storms subsided and the waves were quieted.

SOMEHOW they hung on and made it through the terrible season!

More winds blew and more sand covered up their naked roots. And so it seems, some storms nearly crush and destroy while others give us just what we need to endure.

Muscles are strengthened in my life too. Faith muscles. A will to keep going.

If meager stems of pulp and palm can do it, so can we.

I will cling to my God. I will trust him no matter what comes my way. Even now, as realtors are walking through my rental, I can turn and face the light once more.

All of us are quiet now, our minds busily scratching out new thoughts. We are digging. Reflecting. Grappling with issues. Feeling so much. Though it’s hard at first, once engaged, we begin to make connections here. Like roots entwining sandy places, Lord, help us find our strength in You.

Dear God, thank you for enabling us to reap and thrive. Thank you for elbow moments of turning after a storm and finding strength to survive. May we persevere, clinging to the hope we profess in Jesus’ Name. Amen.