Out of the Snow Dust

by Ruth Braun

OUT OF THE SNOW DUST

I choose a mild morning in June to rip up my potentilla shrubs. I had waited and hoped as I watched my other perennials starting to bud, but spring is progressing, and here they sit, lonely and lifeless. I allow the anticipated disappointment to linger as I pull on my gardening gloves. When I planted this hedge last summer, I knew that they were not reliably hardy enough to survive our harsh Canadian winters. In the ground, maybe, but probably not in garden boxes. I had hoped, but I shouldn’t have risked it. If I had just planted annuals, I could have avoided this irksome weight of guilt permeating my chest.

As I survey the silent cluster of spiny stems, I feel a sense of kinship. I know what it’s like to be desolate and depleted. I would have never guessed that one of the hardest parts of being a missionary family would be coming back home. Home. What does that word really mean? I had ached for a sense of home for years while building a life for my family across the ocean. Now that I am back in my native land, why does that warm feeling of belonging feel as elusive as ever? Essentially starting over in a new city, trying to build community from the ground up. I knew it would be challenging, but I am starting to wonder if it is even possible.

I attended a prayer retreat one fall while overseas, waving and blowing kisses as I headed off in desperate search of the miraculous key to my survival in that hard place. Tucked away from everything except my own frailty, hours ticked by in fervent, wordless conversation. Rivers of struggle streamed down my cheeks, overwhelming my meager box of tissues. I remember listening to Gungor’s song, You Make Beautiful Things, over and over and over. As if playing it just one more time would somehow cause those achingly beautiful lyrics to become my own experience. Beauty growing out of the dust. At that prayer retreat, a flourishing garden had seemed infinite worlds away.

I remember the surreal and poignant process of selling and packing up all of our worldly possessions—not once, but twice. The first time, we were so full of passion and excitement that any sense of loss was brushed aside in our eagerness to answer “the call.” The second time was harder. We had finally made the excruciating decision to move back to Canada, and we could only take what fit into our baggage allowance on the plane. The little life that we had struggled and sweat to build was reduced to a handful of blue plastic bins and some mismatched suitcases. What was the point of leaving Canada in the first place? Was it worth all of the sacrifice? Clandestine questions loomed large during those early days. Everyone around me seemed to scurry about their busy lives while my own felt unbearably static. Frozen. I came to realize that winter is a forced and vital stillness. The barren dusting of snow insulates even as it immobilizes. Such excruciating growth occurs in that shattering dormancy. Such essential recalibration. We know this, but could we choose it if it wasn’t forced upon us?

Gradually, haltingly, my family is starting to rebuild our life and find our place in the place we never expected to be. It doesn’t look like I thought it would. My heart is tender and painted with scars. I am in the messy middle of my story, not yet experiencing the vibrance and thriving that I had hoped for. In fact, I have a sneaking suspicion that the garden of my life will never look quite like I once envisioned. Less colourful and perfect, more ramshackle… and real. Maybe that’s okay.

As I kneel at my garden box on this tender spring day, I suddenly see it. A brief flash of emerald within the bramble. Unexpected hope flares in my chest as I look closer. Sure enough, a tiny bud courageously peers back at me. Then I see another one, and another. Somehow, against all odds, my tenacious little shrubs live on. My demo job has become a pruning mission. With welling eyes, I quietly trim each dead stem to reveal a growing span of ethereal life beneath. Each snip of my shears is a thank you. The lyrics from all those years ago play in my head like a promise. I am starting to wonder. Perhaps joy and hope and, yes, even flourishing don’t always look like a verdant garden. Perhaps, sometimes, they look like a tangle of dry stems with the faintest breath of green.

RUTH BRAUN

Ruth is a writer and advocate living in the Canadian prairies with her husband, five children, and their audacious redbone coonhound. She writes with raw honesty about the messy and sacred journey of life, drawing inspiration from her own experiences as a mother, registered nurse, ex-missionary, foster parent, and spiritual director. Through her words, she invites others to explore the shattering tensions of faith and doubt, grief and joy, struggle and hope.