Today, I am tired. The heaviness of
it resonates with me today in everything I do. The fact that the clothes I’m
wearing are all fished from the dirty clothes hamper, or the fact that my hair
is not done and hangs loosely untamed down my back and shoulders framing my
drooping face. There is no makeup on my face to cover up my dark circles, or
even to cover up the few blemishes that showed themselves this morning that I’m
sure have erupted from stress. I am just simply too tired to care about those
things today.
I spent the wee hours of the morning last night crying on my
kitchen table. My laptop and books strewn across the table, I felt myself
cracking like clay that is drying after being molded and shaped. I couldn’t
hold myself together, and the effort it took to try and collect myself and then
fail made me fall apart even more. As I sat laying my head against my table,
the mascara staining the pages of my bible I had opened I remembered a painting
I saw years ago.
It was of a girl, lying sideways in a field looking up at a
house and barn on the hill. I was simply going to google the description of it
because I couldn’t remember the name but then as I pulled up google I
immediately ‘remembered’ although I don’t ever remember knowing the name in the
first place but nonetheless I knew the paintings name-Christina’s World. I googled it and there it popped up. My heart
seemed to bubble over as I looked at this painting.
That’s it. That’s how I felt.
Weary. Worn out. Weak.
I remember reading about the initial inspiration for the
painter was of a neighbor girl close by who was crippled with Polio and he saw
her climbing a hill with her arms.
This painting resonated (still) with me and I can’t seem to
shake the feeling of it. I feel like that girl-she is continuing on despite her
struggle but the journey for her is difficult, I imagine how tired she must be.
I cannot exactly put my finger on why I feel the way I do.
After all, my struggle is not quite the same as hers. I do not have polio, and
I can walk and run, I am provided for, and I have people around me and yet, I
know just how she feels.
I feel like her because I have felt alone in this struggle
of life. Tired and in pain, she just continues but although there might be
people waiting for her in the place she’s looking towards there is no one along
beside her.
Too often have I felt like this for this to be okay. And I
know that my God does not desire for me to feel this way.
I read that this painting inspired the scene in Forrest Gump
when Jenny is throwing rocks at her childhood home and slips and falls and
therein lies one of the most poignant quotes of the movie:
“Sometimes, I guess there
just aren’t enough rocks.”
Forrest Gump is quite wise for being fictional. But to me
this scene in this movie represents the weakness of our own strength. Though we
may fight and ‘throw rocks’ found from our own self at those looming worriments
in our life, eventually we run out of our own strength and we fall and break
down.
I realized that in this painting perhaps the girl may not be
crawling towards the house but running away from it. Why would a crippled girl
with polio want to leave so bad from a place that she must crawl away from it
to leave?
Or perhaps that place is hope that she has wandered away
from and is crawling back to it and
realized that she can go no further with her own strength.
I do not know.
Perhaps that is the beauty of art and its subjectivity to
each individual that views it.
Nonetheless the aspect of this painting that most resonates
with me is her echoing lonesomeness
in the midst of that field.
After praying about this painting and why I felt so close
with this girl, I felt the Lord whispering to me that perhaps what she is doing,
is waiting. Waiting for her hope. And that’s what I decided she must be doing.
I felt like the Lord showed this to me because this is the
place He wants us to be at. Not that He delights in our weakness and weariness,
but rather this is the place that He meets us. Broken and tired and lacking our
‘rocks’ to fight life with, this is where He comes in, scoops us up and carries
us. Whether He brings us up the hill to the potential house of hope or rescues
us away from the potential house of brokenness, I think that He is waiting for
us to get to this point of weakness so He can come and be our hope.
The Lord is my
strength. And I have run out of rocks.
So as I find myself crawling through the hardship of life’s
worries and lonesomeness, I have decided to wait, below the hill and let Lord
be my hope and carry me to where I need to be.
Love, your new Andrew Wyeth enthusiast, Shelby
