There is something about being in the woods that makes this clear as day. From the dead brown leaves crunching beneath your feet, to the uneven steps, the sort of undone-ness of it all. Really, the woods are a mess. You can make paths, you can create trails, but nature does as it pleases with no regard to you or your particularities. Bugs fly in your face, sticks trip you, mud sticks itself to you, relentless in it's grip. However, I know very few people who come away from a walk angry that they made the trek.
Nature, in God's beautiful design, is a place of peace and calm where you can be undone because all around you is undone. And it's ok. It's ok to be undone in the woods because the trees hold little judgement toward us and our insecurities. Really, wouldn't life be all the better if we treated it as though we were wandering in the woods. Stripped of our insecurities, unbound by our idols, undone by the goodness of our God.
But life. Life is that broken beautiful. That mix of awful and lovely, at times all within the same breath. When you feel everything very deeply, the undone-ness of it all can be overwhelming. It can be downright exhausting because the awful often overshadows the awesome and the broken typically outshines the beauty. Being undone suddenly feels like the whole world has come apart at the seams.
The woods remind us to look at the whole of it all. To allow all the broken pieces to stitch together into this beautiful painting of God's goodness and grace. That all those broken leaves, all those torn pieces fall into this wonderful mess of hues and shapes and forms that outshine the spots and the specks and the flaws of it all.
When I've come unglued, when I feel as though my world has shifted and nothing remains the same. I just take a walk in the woods and I'm reminded: seasons come and go, but the Lord endures forever. And isn't that a glory to behold?
