Red dirt

I have in my kitchen a jar of red, Oklahoma dirt that I gathered while on a family reunion trip years ago. The color of that earth was beautiful - a rusty red that just called out to me!

Last year I read a book about the Dust Bowl ("The Worst Hard Time" by Timothy Egan). It was fascinating, sad, frightening, tragic. It painted such a great picture of what it must have been like to live in those times, fighting that dust and dirt that blew into everything and couldn't be kept out of your life. The dirt seemed to take over people's lives.

That jar of red earth made me think that grief might be just a little like living in the Dust Bowl. After the initial blowing through of events, the sadness just kind of settles down onto life, making its presence known in big and small ways. And every so often, you have to really fight the dirt that swirls and blows on the wind, through every crack and crevice.

I'm disappointed that I've already started having bad dreams (my way of processing tough stuff). I was hoping for a week's good sleep before that foolishness began.

And I wake up in the middle of the night thinking of this or that that I'll never get to tell Dad, show Dad, have him be excited about. Like my trip to the midwest. He never got to hear any of my stories, find out how it was. Nothing about it. I guess I'll have to trust God to pass on the important info, but a little voice inside me questions: do I really trust Him for that? Seems like mighty small potatoes for the Maker of the universe.

So I'll go about my life - cooking, doing laundry, gardening, brushing the red dirt of grief off my shoes when it gets too thick, trying to keep it off my best dresses, and somehow figuring out how to live with this mess. Sometimes I'll get that dirt off the surface and everything will look just fine, but if you look closer, you'll find that it still lingers.