Around the Bend

Around the Bend

By: Susan Deborah Schiller

My husband and I have been exploring rivers this year, sometimes in a motorboat and sometimes by canoe. The Tongue River in Eastern Montana is my favorite, because it bends and twists on itself every few hundred feet. For miles and miles you never hear a sound except the gentle splash of the river and the occasional beaver plopping into the water. It's a restful, peaceful river… until you reach a reservoir where a very large cormorant rookery is established.

Parent cormorants zip back and forth, fetching fish to feed hundreds of babies nesting in these trees. It sounds pretty close to a noisy school yard full of hundreds of children at recess. Happy sounds. As you watch and listen, a slice of Heaven slips into your soul and you inhale the aroma of freedom, security, and rest.

Around the next bend, a fledging bald eagle is studying to look like a statue as we humans paddle the river directly below her perch. The fishing is good this year, as we pass several different bald eagles, blue herons, and hawks.

The river is always moving, just like life. Time doesn't have a pause button. All we have is the moment called Now. Around the bend is future tense. We haven't been there before. We are explorers in this world and if we are fully present in the moment, there is no end to the treasures all around us. We are wealthy creatures, indeed, for we've been given this amazing gift called life.

There are treasures in the ordinary life forms, even beneath our feet. My husband and I sifted through pretty rocks and pebbles, skipping the flat ones in graceful arcs across the water. Examining the lines of sediment, pastel remmants of minerals that make the rocks beautiful, I pocketed the prettiest ones to save for closer examination later.

What if all rocks were steel gray? What if all water was muddy brown. What if the sky was never anything but dingy white?

Instead, our world is cradled in the ever-changing colors of light and shadows, cause and effect. Just as I could find no rock that was the same as any other rock, so each moment in time is different from the next. Each sunrise is brand new. Each person is unique.

Life is beautiful, as well as constantly unfolding in unpredictable ways!

Around the bend, life may suddenly become shaky, uncertain, and confusing. We may unexpectedly discover a betrayal, an abandonment, or slander, accusations, and persecution. What we believed in with all our hearts turns out to be nothing but a series of illusions. Nice enough illusions to be tempted to bury onself in denial – to hang on to the illusion for the fear of slipping into the abyss of despair. Illusions make for shaky ground, with sink holes and cave-ins.

Truth is solid. Truth lasts for eternity. Even when your foundation shakes and shivers and a chasm of horror opens just inches in front of your nose, you can choose, like the flowers below, to open your face to the One who holds you in His hands – to the One who holds the whole world together. To the One who causes the stars to sing, the sun to make it's brilliant circuit across the heavens. To the One who counts each hair on your head and who has tattooed your name on the palm of His hand.

Around the bend is more life than you've yet experienced, dear heart. Around the bend, we go from glory to glory. Establish yourself in today – now, this moment. Yesterday is already down the river. Tomorrow is just around the bend. In this moment you have a choice to shine, to lift your face to the One who loves you best and to reflect that glory on everyone and everything around you.

Shine, dear deart. Shine in this moment. Just this one little moment. Don't worry about what is to come around the bend. You can do it. Look under your feet. Look above your head. Turn in a circle and look all around. There's glory there, in the small, ordinary things of life.

Are you homeless? I've been there. Have you been abandoned? I've been there. Have you been sick, nearly dying? I've been there, too.  It's downright evil.

While I was homeless, living alongside the Big Horn River, I had no idea of what would appear around the next bend. I snapped this picture of what I was seeing at that moment. And wouldn't you know, a brilliant rainbow appeared in the most perfect spot. A hawk circled the mountain just at that moment, too. This photo has not been altered or enhanced – it's just the way it was on that day, when all seemed lost.

If you look for and expect Love, He will come for you. Love is a person.

If you search for Truth. He will come. He's the Holy Spirit.

If you are desperate for peace and rest and tranquility,

She will embrace you like a mama, nursing you at Her breast.

If you look for and expect fear, he will come for you.

Fear is an illusion that can manifest in any form your imagination can concoct.

What you focus on, magnifies and becomes strengthened.

What you think about comes about.

Choose life today. You can create an intentional atmosphere of glory around your life by focusing on what is good, true, beautiful, and sacred. Rejoicing changes the atmosphere. A smile. A little dance. A giggle. Choose each moment to get in the Light of love and to trust that God is Good.

When you're tempted to worry about what may be coming up around the bend, why not choose to think instead: "There's more glory up ahead!"

It was on the river that I learned to trust that Life is Good, because all of Life is sacred. Life beautiful. Life is good. Rest in this moment, Brandy, and shine!

For some creative fun, consider clicking the image above to play in the "Three-Word-Wednesday" blog hop!

With all my love,

Sue

Susan Schiller knows how it feels to lose everything: marriage and family, church and reputation, finances and businesses, and more. Susan's upcoming, interactive memoir, "On the Way Home," tells the story of how she came to be known as "the most abused woman" her counselors had yet met and how she learned to navigate to freedom and fullness.  

Today Susan helps people write their life stories, unearthing the treasures of their past and sowing them into their future, creating new family legacies.

Copyright © 2010 to 2016 Team Family Online, All rights reserved.   For reprint permission or for any private or commercial use, in any form of media, please contact Susan Schiller. 

Tagged as: Choosing Love Today, Deborah White Dove, Getting Your Life Back, Losing it All and Starting Over, New Family Legacy, PTSD - post-traumatic stress disorder, Rewriting the Future, True Religion Speaks, Voice of the Bride