Sit Under this Tree and Rest Awhile

I am not great at rest. Self care, yes. I can run a bubble bath or duck away to a local winery whenever there is time (or company) to do so. But actual rest...well, that is another story.

I am a striver. New York City? Sure. Seattle? Why not. Another degree? Oh, yeah! A personal mantra is: "Don't give a black woman a challenge. There's nothing in her that will not rise to the occasion."

After graduate school, I walked through a challenging season many of us are asked to walk through with God. You know, that season of "What is next?" I knew the Holy Spirit had called me to follow Her to Seattle to attend seminary, but I hadn't yet figured out what gainful employment looked like after obtaining a graduate degree in theology. I didn't feel called to be a traditional minister, though I knew God would somehow incorporate all the learning and growing into my vocation. For nine months after grad school, I applied for jobs in Seattle, hoping to remain close to the community built there.

In that season, I walked miles around Seward Park, the forest neighboring Hillman City, where I was living at the time. I searched for bald eagles and prayed, as I took step after step on that beautiful peninsula off of Lake Washington. I gasped at Mount Rainier standing in her glory in the distance. I watched the sun glimmering off the water. I occasionally tossed shells and stones back in the lapping waves. But mostly, I communed with the trees, the evergreen giants which stood upright throughout every season.

It was during one of these walks, when I was feeling forsaken and confused, praying prayers like: "A degree in theology, really? Where is the job that goes with that?" When I felt God respond to my groanings. He sent an invitation to "Sit under this tree and rest awhile."

Those words stayed with me, but it wouldn't make sense until nearly five years later. After that season of applying to upwards of 70 jobs in Seattle, I moved back to the SF Bay Area and lived with my parents for a time during a global pandemic. Doing so enabled me to save enough for a down payment to buy my first home in the nautical city of Vallejo, California. I knew the place was meant to be mine because it came with its own personal redwood grove. Seventeen trees stood strong around the borders of our townhome.

What I didn't know as all of this was playing out was that two months after he accompanied me to the title company to sign my name to the deed, Brandon would be killed. I didn't know that under these evergreen trees, I would enter a season of grief and mourning so spectacular that I would be forced to sit down and catch my breath. I didn't know I would be forced to remember how to breathe. That I would cry and writhe and pray as I grieved the loss of a man who taught me what love felt like in my body. I had no idea, but God knew. And in His knowing, He placed 17 giants around me. So that I would be able to sit down and rest in under their shady canopy.

Grief incapacitates us. It makes us realize we are not in control of our lives. It forces us to accept that there are things we may never understand this side of heaven. It makes us realize our mortality. It invites us to accept God's plan is often more difficult and mighty than we would have chosen. It initiates us into the counter side of love. It enables us to bear witness to the sorrow of others.

In the year and two months since we lost B, the redwood trees have invited me to look up, even when I didn't want to. To acknowledge that they know something that we don't. In every season, these giants stand, their arms stretched to the heavens, declaring God's sovereignty. They are not shaken, for they have learned how to sway.

Brandon's favorite color was green, and mine is teal. A combination of those two colors is a deep evergreen. An emerald only found in the forest. It makes complete sense, then, that the book dedicated to our love and his loss would be titled after the friends who have stood guard while I have been forced to rest. Shades of Green: A Theology of Loss and Love, is available for purchase on Amazon on February 29, 2024.