I suppose if I encourage myself enough, I shall pick up a canvas and paint something today. But we shall see. I realized, recently, it has been since I moved that I have completed an oil painting. The amount of half-finished canvases sitting about my place is rather embarrassing. Abandoned works-in-progress you might call them.
That word, abandoned, is very often in my vocabulary these days. I worried my friends enough with my strange fascination with cemeteries that peaked out into obsession last summer. I've often enjoyed spending hours walking through them, whether it be by myself or with an other sweet soul, I've just found the whole experience to be peaceful. Albeit, a little disturbing at times when one comes across a grave so strangely marked or etched with some disconcerting epitaph, but mostly it's been a delight. Perhaps college is where I decided that cemeteries felt like an adventure as I would walk from one human passed to another. Always wondering what their lives had been like and what became of the human that bothered to place a monument in their honor when the person had passed on. I wonder what sort of adventures those that were buried had gone on and if they had been happy or not.
The most amazing thing, of course, is that some of the stones showed that the person had lived to be 100yrs old and some only lived to be 1 day old and some were still born. Still born. They have no birth date, just the death date. Which is odd to me, because they had to have lived in order to have died, right?
There's a lot of thinking to do in a cemetery. I've often been told that the dash between the birth and death date is the most important part of all of it. The dash being the unknown of what happened between those two dates. I think, too, about my own life. My dash is quite full, and I rather wish instead of a dash, that my own grave stone would have a scroll that would roll out and proclaim all of the wonderful life that took place in my dash. "Lived life to the full" would hardly describe it. But all in all, I think about how in the end, I shall just be one more stone in a grave yard of many. Just some words scratched on a rock to be passed over by some other wanderer in times to come.
After wandering through near 30 different graveyards in too many different towns to count, I've left some of my close friends to wonder if I might be a little disturbed to be so obsessed with death. But it is not death that I find so intriguing, but life that has come and gone. I would say it is too cold for grave wanderings lately, but the cold only lessons the amount I adventure through them. I was in one this past weekend, and although it was a bit too chilly to linger and wonder as much as I usually like, it was a good walk all the same. I have a handful of friends who have joined me in my enjoyment of such things and they were as delighted as I was when we entered into such a large cemetery as the one we did.
They are also my same close friends who have taken up an intense fascination with abandoned things like houses and buildings and gas stations. I'm SO fascinated with abandoned houses. Like a human laid to rest is a body abandoned by a soul, is a house that sits empty and alone for years on end. It's amazing to wander through an abandoned house, knowing it was once a place of life and comfort. It's interesting to see what things were left behind and in what state the house sits unoccupied. Along with whatever was left behind in the yard, or the barns for that matter. The idea that life can simply just stop altogether is rather a lot to wrap my mind around. But it draws me closer to the Lord knowing that my life will never truly end. It will just begin anew, absent of pain or brokenness or sadness.
I've decided that something abandoned is just an adventure that someone left behind for me to find. And I have sweet friends who gladly explore such adventures with me. The Lord knows my heart. He knows how much I LOVE to find an abandoned place and explore it and wonder at what was and is no more. I feel like the Lord blesses me with such things more often than I could hope.
My friend's car broke down in Des Moines, which is the town I would head one way to go home and my friends would head the opposite way to their home. It's our halfway point for meeting in the middle.
I was sad for them to not have a car, but very excited at the opportunity to spend 1 or 2 extra hours with them as I drove them half way home for someone to pick them up and take them the rest of the way.
We were told the halfway point had nothing and there would be no real place to pull off. We were COMPLETELY overjoyed to see by "nothing" it was meant, "Abandoned gas station." An abandoned gas station has been on our list of hopeful explorations since last July. MONTHS, guys. And of course we wish not to break anything in our enterrings and thus appreciated that all the breakings to be done had already happened. All the glass doors were smashed in and unlocked anyways. The back wall had been broken down and it was very evident that we were not the first explorers to happen upon such an adventure. Of course, we did not intend to spray paint, demolish, or plunder anything as the previous explorers had done, but we were quite glad that it was easy to enter and it was a very large place with much to see.
There is so much to think about in abandoned places like this one. There was still an item or two left on the selling shelves, a whole rack full of travel pamphlets, fully stocked was collecting dust and causing the edges of the paper to curl. Pipes had fallen down, restaurant benches broken up, and the strangest art work spray painted onto the walls. Perhaps it would be considered disturbing, but I only wonder at the story behind it.
From such adventures I draw the deepest comforts because I am reassured that I am not an abandoned work in progress. The Lord has never left me to be plundered or ruined, he has never given up or halted in-progress. He never ran out of the resources it takes to complete the good work he started in me. And He has never changed or aged or withered with time. His strength grows when my heart breaks and his peace reaches the deepest places of my soul.
No wonder John always claimed to be the disciple whom Jesus loved. Because he was. And I am the Fern whom Jesus loves. I am the project that takes the most work. I am the tedious, detailed, time consuming, masterpiece that The Lord is delighted to spend all His efforts and affections perfecting.
And He thinks the same of you, Dear Reader. Give the Lord an inch and He will gladly take a mile. Ask for a drop and He'll give you the ocean. A year ago, as I considered my life the most perfect, the most happiest, the most content it could ever be, I never imagined that I'd find myself covered in dust and ash as I maneuvered myself through the wreckage of a structure some life had left behind. Smiling at how my heart dances with each new exploration. Beaming at how my friends share the same love of exploration and adventure as me and delighting in how their hearts dance to find something left behind as well.
We only had about 7 minutes in that abandoned gas station. I imagine we could have easily stretched it to hours. Taking our time imagining through each little detail of every little item left in that mess. Wondering about the child's stuffed animal covered in dirt, being amazed by the damage and preservation all at once. And all at once feeling entirely loved by Jesus at how much joy one can find in an old wreckage. Knowing that we ourselves were once an empty structure of abandoned decay before we allowed the Lord to adventure into us and make us the most joyful of happy filled castles He can.
And we are happy. We are SO happy. Every adventure gives us a longing for the next. We eagerly anticipate the next thing the Lord will bring us to and hope with all of our hearts we will all be there together to partake in it. We find the biggest pleasures in the smallest adventures. Our hearts are hardly big enough for the amount of joy each adventure brings to us. The Lord loves us. More than we can possibly know. But we are so delighted by every little thing.
And I am thankful. I'm thankful for my friends and their love for The Lord. I'm thankful for The Lord and His love for us. And I'm thankful for every adventure left behind for us to find and I cannot wait til the next time we find them.
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