Nature's Skyscrapers

Let me preface this post by saying: I absolutely love being a therapist. There are a lot of ways in which I’m not sure the direction my life will take, but my identity as a couple and family therapist is a certainty. I feel incredibly blessed to accompany people in places of pain and fear, and it has been the most beautiful gift to see people experience healing and find hope amidst the darkness. By jumping headfirst into the realm of human experience, I have grown more in two years of doing therapy than I could have ever imagined was possible. That being said, this past week has been hard. I’ve held people’s pain, and my heart has hurt with theirs. I wouldn’t change this part of my job even if I could, but after this long, beautiful, challenging week, I needed to fill my soul back up. Sometimes I turn to cupcakes (can you say…self-care dinner?), but usually I turn to nature for healing grace.

So yesterday, I spent most of the afternoon hiking around Caprock Canyon. It was healing and soothing and invigorating in all the ways I needed it to be. More than that, I found myself reflecting on why I feel such a connection with nature. For that, I have my family to sincerely thank. Some of my earliest memories include hiking with my family in Colorado, and I remember being fascinated as a child by fuzzy caterpillars, flower petals, puddles of water, and blades of grass. As I grew older, my mom encouraged me to stay grounded in appreciation for the earth we are called to embrace. Nature is my refuge when I am feeling weak, when I am lost, when I am broken.  

 

 

Walking through the canyon yesterday, I was thinking about how I am much more impressed with natural occurrences than I am with man-made feats like skyscrapers or amusement parks. Why? The way I see it, what man builds can be easily torn down by earthquakes or terrorist attacks or fires or any number of destructive forces. What God builds in nature can also be damaged. Sometimes this involves natural processes like erosion; sometimes it involves careless human error leading to wildfires or overconsumption resulting from greed or lack of planning. Seeing all the ways in which erosion had helped develop these canyons really made me stop and think. Now, this won’t be a brilliant, scientifically accurate description of erosion, but hear me out. With wind and rain and all sorts of weather over a huge expanse of time, erosion had torn down these rocks and scarred them. But it’s almost like I could see how God’s hand had carved out these beautiful parts of the earth that didn’t exist before and weren’t visible under the original surface. There’s beauty in the breakdown. And at the bottom of the riverbed, these rocks had swept across and grated against each other, creating this beautiful mixture of browns and blues and whites. Friction can create something mysteriously lovely. I can appreciate that in the human spirit, both for my clients and for myself.  

 

 

What about 50 years from now? If I return to this same spot, will it look the same? All the crevices and jagged edges I have touched today, what stories would they have to tell in half a century? Would I recognize these same spaces, or would they have changed beyond recognition? It makes me think about the ways in which I have changed as a result of my life experiences. There are parts of me now that I’m not sure I would have recognized in myself ten years ago – some parts are improvements, I think, and some are surely works in progress. I suppose we’re all parts of God’s creation, constantly changing as a result of forces beneath the surface.