Heart on Paper

Have you ever seen a movie, read a book, heard a conversation and felt like someone had crawled inside your heart and revealed your most private thoughts? Like they had taken your emotions, your words and described it better than you could?

I have those moments every now and then. One of my favorite movies, The Holiday, has some lines that could have been plagarized from my heart.

And then there is this:

Emma pointed to a tree on the other side of the river that bent at an angle over the water. Its leaves drooped from white barked branches. "Mr. Bowen, how would you draw that?"

Luke Bowen thought about it for a moment. He nodded toward the tree in question. "That's a cottonwood. Nothing special." But then he paused and studied it. "Do you see how the roots are coming up on the surface? How the bank has washed away and left some of them bare?"

Emma nodded.

"That is where I would start. Drawing those roots. I would think about how long they've been there and how long they might yet last. See the different colors of bark?"

"Yes, there are many different colors. Are they weakened? Being exposed like that?"

"Yes, they're weakening." Luke pointed up to the tops of the branches. "See the leaves?"

Emma nodded.

"Now see the leaves of the trees near them?" His hand gestured to the stronger trees.

Emma paused and said in a voice of growing wonder. " The leaves are smaller, thought the tree itself seems as big as the others."

"Yes. Exactly." Luke grinned at her. "The other trees are getting more from the soil, through the roots, so their leaves are bigger and healthier." He pointed toward the tree in question. "That tree is failing. It's hanging on. But it's failing because the roots are exposed, shrinking. It won't be long before the whole thing falls into the river."

"As the river washes away the banks, little by little." Emma replied. "It gives life and it takes it away."

Luke nodded. "Yes, that is what I would try to capture the feel of in a drawing."

Emma turned toward Luke. "I think people are like that. Some are just hanging on, hoping life won't sweep them away."

"Is that how you feel?"

Emma nodded. "Until you came into  my life. You are like...you are like a great rope around that tree, holding it, hauling it back up so that it's straight. But...I'm afraid that I am on the bank that is washing away, and it will take too much to pull me up. I'm afraid the roots are still eroding. That unless I have a full transplant to some other place, some place far, far from such a river, I am only being given a reprieve."

Her words cut him, delved in, and showed him her place and his. He had no answer for her.

She stood and nodded. '"Let's find the trading post."

Her voice sounded brisk with forced cheerfulness, and that briskness tore through his heart. He finally realized how it had been for her - every day, another piece of her dropping, falling, a life seeped away. She'd just been waiting to succumb to the river's flow.
      from Angel's Den by Jamie Carie

I have been at that bank. I have seen little pieces of myself caught in a current beyond my control. But thankfully God is working on transplanting me. He is planting me in a place where my roots can grow and hold me fast against waters eroding powers or even the strength of a violent storm. I'm not there yet, but I am on my way.