When I look at the forest on the eastern side of our home where the risen sun makes pathways between trunks and through branches and leaves, I see layers of alternating light and shadow. These layers create patterns and textures that contain more beauty and depth than if the forest were all dark with shade or all bright with full sun.
We experience a similar truth in our lives.
If our life is all despair, hardship, and depression, we are without hope, trapped in a darkness that is emotionally and spiritually suffocating.
If our life is too easy and without responsibilities and challenges, we are naïve, lacking the experience that brings about growth; or worse, we become lazy, entitled, and apathetic. Without the balance of shadow, we are blinded by too much light.
If we allow the difficult times to lead us to exam ourselves and respond wisely, to stretch our capacity for patience, to teach us how to forgive, to curb our tongues, and prove that time heals, then our characters are shaped to handle the shadows of life with maturity and grace.
Our response to the darkness directly connects with how much wellbeing is present in our lives and relationships. If we are consumed by resentment towards someone who hurts us, there is no space for joy and peace. Much like closely woven branches that shut out the sun, our fuming, harping, and ruminating create a tight net of dark thoughts that prevents our hearts from opening and learning to love and forgive. There is an enlargement that happens in one’s inner landscape through forgiveness, an ability to let go of offenses, creating a sense of freedom and space - space for the light to get though, bringing peace and contentment on its rays.
Yes, we need the rough places to create texture and grit in our characters. And we also need times of ease, peace, joy, and contentment…time to rest from the struggle, bask in the sun, and take a saunter down a smooth and easy road. This balance of struggle and growth with rest and peace is essential to being human and living into God’s image. God’s creative order gives us a prototype of this pattern.
Watch the forest.
Every year the trees move through four acts with rhythmic grace -
stirrings of hope and rebirth in Spring,
perseverance through Summer’s heat and storms,
fruit bearing, color, and letting go during Autumn,
restful dormancy in the stillness of Winter.
As our lives reflect these patterns, we grow too, and our characters are formed in multilayered dimensions, filtering light through the shadows. Rather than being flat and shallow, we become deep and complex, mature and wise…like a forest - strong and steady, a textured canopy of beauty and shelter.
by Heather J. Willis, author
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