Carry This Shifting
by Thelma Nienhuis

I carry the shifting in my bones.

The shortening days and open windows and the quiet ache to heat the kettle as the sun sets.

The faint pulse of seasonal change traces lines along skin and memory, reminding me of what the long winter days hold for my husband: meagre energy and ineffectual remedies and vigilant protection where possible.

My husband has lived with chronic pain and illness for more than a decade now. Nearly fifteen years of a progressive genetic condition, and each winter we find ourselves tracing the same hope: perhaps this year it won’t be so bad. Perhaps this year…

“Self-fulfilling prophecy,” someone scoffed once. As though thinking made it so. As though my preparation for winter was responsible for the persistent flare of his pain when temperatures drop and the climate keens to snow. Good vibes only, I suppose. The power of positive thinking? Sure. Maybe that works for some people (though I doubt it.)

Oh, how much would change if wishing made it so. Elimination of pain and tumors and skeletal deformities and constant fatigue and and and… if wishing made it so, my husband would be well by now. He would be whole and tall. He would reach again for the golf club and the tennis racquet, and he would enjoy the strength of his physical body doing things he loved.

There is grace when suffering lingers. When pain doesn’t mend and the bones warp and fatigue carves lines on his face. When he is pale and barely eats. Chronic life is a shared burden, and I speak of his condition in terms of ‘we’ – not to minimize his pain but to acknowledge my own. Watching love suffer is pain. Knowing seasonal change brings sorrow is pain. We carry this together.

There is grace when suffering lingers. Grace, as KJ Ramsey writes in her book This Too Shall Last, not to rescue, but to persevere. We may not be lifted out of the hard, but we are promised his presence in it.

And so I pause and hold space for the way my body and mind and heart remembers these days. I anticipate the days I will not see him and the nights where sleep will leave and pain will claw his nerves to pieces.

And I will remember how we make it through: not with good vibes or mind over matter. Not with plucky cheerfulness or stoic nonchalance. Instead, with grit-fortified grace. With lament and comfort. In utter dependence on the merciful presence of God. He is here, he has not dropped us yet. And he won’t.

I’ll take that over good vibes every day of every season.

Thelma Nienhuis has walked the broken road of life long enough to know that grief and joy hold hands. She is a wife, dog-mom, author, and seminary student, and will never say no to donuts. When she’s not writing or studying, you’ll find her snuggling three mini Australian labradoodles on the couch. Connect with her on Instagram, Facebook and her website.

Barren Land and Plenty
by Sarah Freymuth

Rough scrape of leaves across pavement. Trees blend of barren twigs for branches, burnt orange, red wine, apple yellow.

Invisible God manifested in the breeze cool on my face, gliding through my hair. Dome of blue sky arched around the perimeter of land, jet stream the only puncture of white in a space void of clouds. Ruffle of evergreen reminiscent of swan plume.

My brother and I share a small table on the side patio of the town café. Late October, all the customers stay inside, close to the steam of espresso machine and heat of the sandwich griddle. Out here in the shade, it is him and I, away from the world and lost in our own words. Vacant land across the parking lot lays empty but full for the imagination.

This is precious time we have entered. In the morning I will be strapped into the seat of an airplane and carried away from home and to my here. Back to cracked-open in multiple places, various roles I have yet to understand. Back to no touch except for hugs from the ladies at my church, once a week nurturing that I’m still starved for because it’s not enough.

But here, across the table, my brother’s heart is tied to mine and I am filled to the brim without even uttering one breath. I helped to grow him up and he, in turn, taught me the unending swell of love.

There is no place better than Autumn in Wisconsin. Grass stands a little too high, lush and leaning toward last rays of a butter sun. The familiar creak of our heavy wood door revolving siblings and parents and visitors through the kitchen and out to line of cars in the driveway.

Winter is coming, but for now the squirrels are scampering among the pines and all my people are around me. My heart beats easier, mind loosened from its constant knot. I have burrowed deep in the limbs of trees, crash of waves on sand, billow of clouds in a world of natural wonder. I can simply soak in the world around me with nourished heart and home stitched under my skin.

I really am meant to have a poet’s eye to see the beauty in the everyday, tiny details give words and life to the still frames of moments that otherwise pass into the caverns of history.

Here is where God resides closest to me. Here is where it all began, where His presence still pulses in rhythm to my own. We’re all on precious time, wherever we land. Whether we’re set where we want to be or in upheaval. What we have is our one breath, and then another.

My brother’s eyes fasten to the page before him, hand gripping pen and fusing heart to poetry. Full of wonder and what if. When he lifts his face to find mine, I am reminded afresh of how tender his heart rends, how much of myself I see in him. How love gives extravagantly without thought.

Rest. If only in this minute, this moment with my brother, the beat of my heart that God has put within me to remind that He is everywhere, in my barren land and plenty.

Sarah Freymuth writes at the intersection of beauty and the every day while grappling with God’s goodness when life projects otherwise. She is the communications manager for Fellowship of Christian Athletes, a member of Redbud Writers Guild, is the editor of Awake Our Hearts, loves a good cup of black coffee, and enjoys her simple Midwest life in Wisconsin. Connect with her at www.sarahfreymuth.com and Instagram, and Facebook.

Writer’s Fall
by Keren Dibbens-Wyatt

Even as a child I didn’t really understand the excitement about new leaves, buds on trees, the denizens of the nests changing. I wanted everything to stay the same. Skeletons should not creak back to life. The dark sorcery of spring fazed and frightened me. The familiar faces made of barking knotholes, the shapes of wooden arms and fingers would disappear each year into unrelenting foliage, along with the stories we had created together. Drowning in green.

Two hundred seasons later, everyone still raves about pink blossom and the loud fullness of sap that follows it. I cover my ears and watch from my room, from behind the sliver of window I allow myself. That way I do not get overwhelmed. The crescendo of spring into summer becomes noise. The heat suffocates and lays heavy, unwelcome extra blankets on already sultry nights. Even the moon looks weighed down, wider than she should be, flattened out like a pancake, sizzling.

But soon it is my time. There is a golden harvest to gather, to glean from. The apples shine with rust and make the short leap to the ground when the time is ripe and the cord is twisted beyond brittleness. Birthings are soft and squelching, or they crown as dancers, leaves dusted with cocoa finally breaking free from their prisons and sculling downwards in pirouettes. They are dry hammocks filled with cool air, neither end tethered to anything but the whim of the wind.

This is my hearth, my heart-time. My skin is patchy and browning, thinning and creasing. I am letting my bark show. This is no longer the tower of a princess, but of a pacing crone. A madwoman in the attic who is so full of ideas that she must turn over a new leaf every day, and pour herself out in ink. This is how I bleed now.

I will spin gold from straw, and let the brambles climb up and entwine me in their magic. Time will stand still. There will be no winter, and I shall brook no spring.

Keren Dibbens-Wyatt is a chronically-ill contemplative, writer and artist. She has a passion for prayer, poetry, story and colour. Her writing features regularly in literary journals (Fathom, Amethyst Review, The Blue Nib) and on spiritual blogs (Contemplative Light, Godspace). She is the author of the book Recital of Love (Paraclete Press, 2020). Keren lives in England and suffers from M.E. which keeps her housebound and out of the trouble she would doubtless get into otherwise. Connect with her on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, and her website.