Yesterday I took a dear visiting friend on a brisk walk through the temperate woodland just a couple doors down from us, and after we’d looked at the vast vista out over Loch Ken, we proceeded further to the Raider’s Trail and Kirsten’s Bridge over the babbling brook, through the field of blooming thistle, and on to the enchanted loch. The big heron, disturbed by our arrival, flapped away above the trees, but there we sat and enjoyed the stillness.
Until a pebble, tossed with precision into the centre of the tiny loch, repaid the throw with the most perfect concentric rings of ripples that made their way shorewards. Shortly thereafter, a healthy fish breached, with a startling splash, and then all was quiet again.
Lately, a number of lives known to us have been cast into a waiting turmoil, such that any perceived joy feels more like a pretence, a façade, than the real thing. When events take an unprecedented turn and everything is on hold while any news is awaited, it’s so very trying. Just eking our way through the wearisome days is a challenge.
Even more mundane stints of waiting for this or that component of a project can feel stultifying. We want to get up and get on with it. But because of circumstances, we’re forced to sit it out, yearning for fruition, and unable to contemplate the joys of daily life. How much more difficult it must be when life is interrupted by a severe challenge, and those who wait must attempt to console themselves for the duration.
This blog will resume, I hope, with the joys, when the waiting is over, and life, if it can, returns to a sense of normality.
Roads to Joy 
Leave a comment