Cotton

In the whipping Texas wind, I stoop to pull balls of cotton from last year's old stalks. The fields are red in the spring sun, and are littered with loose cotton that wasn't scooped up at harvest. The soft clumps have blown and gathered into piles along the side of the fields, ready to be plowed back into the soil in the spring.

My mind goes to a story I once read of slaves picking cotton, the rough boles tearing their skin, the pace forced by the overseers not allowing for care or caution. I think about this as I fill my little bag. In my life, most choices are mine to make - about almost everything. To live as a slave? I can't begin to imagine it.

This cotton plant is such a picture of life. As I sit to write today, my mind is filled with so many different stories from the last two weeks that could spill onto the page - my sister's beautiful wedding, Tim and my fun trip down through New Mexico and across west Texas, the joy of coming home, the wonderful time with sisters ... but the fun week ending with news of the death of an amazing woman, a long-time family friend whose suffering had gone on for 50 years.

Good and bad, soft and iron-hard, the tender and the tearing. Life's journey. I cling to the knowledge that life has as much joy as it does sorrow, even though the sorrow sometimes seems to surround us like a fog. If I will keep my eyes raised up, if I will look to the sky, the sunshine will pierce through those clouds and illuminate my days. I don't walk in darkness.

Last week Melissa walked down the aisle in the fading light of a spring evening, aglow in her beautiful dress, she and Matt holding hands before he gave her into Jason's care. Their flower girls? Two of the cutest little twins ever seen in their tulle dresses banded with yellow ribbon, wandering through the crowd like ladybugs in a garden, flitting here and there.

And Marly? She was given a hard life to live, fraught with illness and pain. But she lived that life striving to smile, to speak of God's provision and love, to be brave and weak at the same time. Now her suffering is over, and in my mind's eye I see her with my mom and dad, with Tim's grandma, my friend Kittie - all these people I've loved now in the bright light of heaven, free and filled with rejoicing.

A bole of cotton, tough and hard, able to tear and wound, but filled with something so soft and lovely.