You can ask anyone who knows me…especially my sweet hubby…CHANGE is my middle name. I can roll with the punches like the best of them. I can adapt, adjust, regroup, reform, revise, diversify, shift, twist, transform, remodel, and steer in a whole new direction. I’ve made myself over so many times, I am unrecognizable to those who’ve known me longest. But there comes a point where it gets “purt near impossible” as my grandma used to say…even for a flexible person like me.

I can handle when things slow down. I can take it when certain items are unavailable. After all, I lived through the great gasoline, toilet paper and sugar shortage of 1973-74 in the UK. We were actually given ration coupons. I hate that this disease is causing so much hardship on the world. It breaks my heart the amount of death that lies in its wake.

The first time I ever faced the visual shock of devastating change was in the late ‘80s, early ‘90s. I was on my annual trip to West Virginia to visit my family. I always stayed at the farm as much as possible when I went home and no trip was complete without a hike back up on the hill to the old Strawberry Shed. At this time, I could still walk up the trail behind the barn and walk through the woods. Now, old trees have long since fallen up the holler and blocked any way to get up through there, let alone finding the path since it’s overgrown.

That one particular summer, I hiked back up on the hill and when I came out into the clearing where the old garden was, I dropped to my knees in disbelief. The woods were gone. Just…gone! They had been clear cut and nothing was left but stumps. Something inside me felt broken and I cried my heart out. Someone had killed my childhood memories and I felt violated.

No one told me about the woods. No one warned me what the change would look like or that I should prepare myself. For them, it was a matter of course. Wood is a commodity on a farm and when you need to build a building or you need some money to live on, you make a withdrawal out of the “Bank of Nature” and cash it in. I knew this in my logical brain, but my emotional brain was devastated.

Last fall, my dear friend Gail told us our beloved Beaver Creek State Park was going to close soon after our “What a Hoot” event with the Girl Campers. She said they were going to cut out some dead wood, thin out the woods to improve the forest health, and mitigate a couple of old holding ponds leftover from the days when the area was a strip mine. The plan was to fill in those two pits and cut some of the far trees so you could once again look down over the edge to see the Pioneer Village below.

That sounded good. A healthy move. A needed change. It would promote healthy new growth and cut down on the terrible mosquito problem that infested the area in late summer. I haven’t been back up there yet. The state park is still closed for rehab. And, the pandemic has kept us from camping yet. Then, I saw the first photos from the park and I was once again hit in the gut with that familiar pain from such a visual change.

The trees are just…gone. It looks like all of them, from what I can see. What was once magical is now just a memory. We can only hope that what is there will become beautiful again, but it won’t be in our lifetime. The changes we are seeing from the pandemic may also be far reaching. Many are unimaginable and hit us in the gut. Things are different. And more change will come. And some of it will be downright ugly and frightening, but….at the same time…

The birds will sing.

The sun will rise and set.

The seasons will change.

Babies will come.

Elders will go.

The water will flow from the peaks of the mountains to the valleys below.

There will be fires and storms and earthquakes and disease.

And there will be life.

Resilient, strong, adaptable people will persevere. We may not live long enough to see how it all plays out but we can rest assured of one thing…

No matter what is thrown at us in this life, we know the end of the story and good triumphs over evil. 

It is finished. We just haven’t seen the end of it yet.

❤️

“For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.”

Jeremiah 29:11 ESV