only the beginning of the adventure

 

I sit on the back deck with a pile of fresh-picked corn cocooned in green sheaths next to me. Slowly, methodically, I pull back leaf by pale green leaf, exposing the silky yellow hairs beneath. The kernels are the color of midsummer sunshine and smell like August, and the scent rubs off on my fingertips in the form of a subtly sticky milk.

The western wind picks up a stray corn husk playfully. I look up and watch the gust ripple across the hayfield, with blue and gray September riding on its back. Mt. Adams hunches worriedly on the horizon, as if braced for the coming snows; yet the sunflowers bob unabashed by the threat of frost, and the goldfinches hang like droplets of sunshine on a blue chicory-blossom sky.

Today, I left. Today was my last breath of the unique summer-autumn transition in Goldendale. I left a world of unpredictable blue and gold brushstrokes for the level green horizon and aquamarine skies of Florida—one year ago today.

And tomorrow, I pick up the season where I left off.

I could almost believe that the year in between never happened, that tomorrow is just another day that I’ll get to spend drinking up late-summer sunshine and breathing in the nut-brown scent of a newly shorn wheatfield. I could almost believe it… except that I am not the same person I was a year ago. Except that I have been through too many hurts for there not to be scars—some on my body, others on my heart. Except that I am, as unbelievable as it seems, even more blessed today than I ever was before.

When I reflect on all this, there is no room for discontentment. I am assured that God has done right. I am left without doubt that He has not lost interest in or power over my life. His love will not let me go.

This is only the beginning of the adventure.