I was sitting at my desk in my writing cottage this morning with a heavy heart. I couldn’t shake it. A moment later, I glanced out the west window and the tree outside caught my eye as it was casting a shadow. I couldn’t help but be pulled out of my chair and just stared at it for a few moments. I sensed it had a message for me.

Yesterday afternoon I had grabbed the watering can to fill it with water from the spigot on the side of our house so I could water some outside plants. It was then that I noticed under a nearby shrub baby bunnies snug as could be under it. I stayed at a distance, but from what I could tell it looked like four of them. My heart just burst with joy at the sweetness of their features with their little soft-looking faces, light pink noses, tiny ears, and eyes still closed. 

Such a beautiful thing to see – this new life right before my very eyes. For a moment a thought ran through my mind that in nature many newborn bunnies don’t always make it. But I quickly dismissed it.

Before I turned in for the night, it was still somewhat light out, so I peeked out the east window of our bedroom where I could see the shrub, but wasn’t able to see the little ones. Yet I knew they were there and it made my heart smile. I looked forward to just being able to check on them in this way until they left the nest.

But Mother Nature had other plans for the bunnies as I’d soon discover when I opened the blind on the window this morning. I won’t go into the details, but something had found them during the night.

While I know this is the cycle of life and how nature works, my heart ached for the loss of those bunnies. But as I sat thinking about it, I was being reminded that they were nourishment for another critter and perhaps that was the sole reason for their coming into this world at the time they did.

It was then that I had looked up after that thought and saw the tree casting this shadow— reminding me there is also beauty in the shadow – to feel love for something as I did for the bunnies and then to experience their passing—both emotions crack the heart wide open.

And it had me circling back to what we’ve all been going through in our world right now with the virus crisis – so much grieving as a collective and also in our own individual lives of what was and what is still yet to be known. Things we have had to learn to let go of in order for something new to come in. The lives that have been lost but perhaps left in the divine planning of it all to guide us to a deeper understanding of the preciousness of life.

It reminded me again of the bigger perspective of being able to hold it all—the difficult emotions and the beautiful ones— and still, remember and know that there is so much goodness in this world now and yet to come.

It was also another reminder for me to just move through these emotions I was feeling. No need to block them out or push them down, but just allow them to flow through me. And I came to a point that no matter the heartbreak of life, I’d not trade it for all the moments of happiness I get to experience too.

xo,

Barbara