Tadpoles (Lisa)

It has been ten years since that fateful tadpole day. I have returned to Longwood Gardens, our favorite healing place quite often in person and in my thoughts alone. It makes me pause and think of the wonders of God’s creation. The majestic trees, water gardens and flowerbeds never cease to amaze me, but on that day in June, it was the tadpoles that struck me the most.

My husband Pat told me he grew up playing every summer with them but I had never gazed in person at this stage of transformation, so I stood wide-eyed and amazed as scores of fat little bodies shimmied up from the only life they had ever known, to break through the water’s surface and gulp a mouthful of completely foreign air. They looked so brave, so joyful, their heads hovering in the air for a moment, then slipping back down into the comfort of all that was so familiar, deep into all that come before. It made me pause, thinking of that moment just before their very first breath. Ten years later, I am still thinking about it. Would I? Could I be that brave?

Anyone who has suddenly lost the dream of an imagined certain future, or lost a loved one, or their own health and with it, that blissful feelings of being forever young, can relate to that burning, strange new air. We are left barely treading water, wanting to sink deep into our old familiar life, but having no choice except to adapt, start a new chapter, choking down the unfamiliar present moment by moment, first breath… second.

But, on that day in June, I just stared, slack jaw at what was a fleeting moment in the life of a frog. If I had returned the following week, they would be different; longer limbed, tail free, easy air-breathing landlubbers. Though we are on a different time frame, we are so like the tadpoles, trying to live between two realities and we too will transform. We won’t be here forever.

Back then, I didn’t know how I was going to deal with life after my daughter Claire but I believed she would go long before me. I wanted to be as brave for her as she had been for me. I wanted to make her proud of me, a brave, daring, darting tadpole, shimmying up with the same look of joy and eagerness, with the undaunting confidence Claire always had in God’s promise.

I cannot say that I’ve succeeded in all that, but I am not alone. I have been blessed to meet a posse of tadpoles who have been brave, sharing their journey, finding joy treading the waters together. And as we tell cherished memories of loved ones, or safely lament what was to be, as we dip back into all that was, our own old beautiful familiar, I hope it gives us pause to think this thought

There was a time before, before Claire, before we ever met our loved ones or had our mortal awakenings. There was a time when what is now our old familiar was so unknown to us, when it was a new unfamiliar air. God did not fail us in the past. He is the one who gave us our loved ones. He gave us beautiful hopes and the ability to dream. Our loving God blessed us with all that was, all that beautiful-beyond-words familiar and He will bless us again with all that will be. Anew. Fresh. Future. How could it be anything less than beautiful? He goes before us and calls us to a new air, a new unknown reality brimming with unknown joys, hopes, dreams and always His undying love

After filling their hungry lungs, those little fat bodies shimmied down backwards, trusting in what was, moving with an undaunting confidence. I want THAT kind of trust in Jesus moving forward because HE is the ONLY ONE who knows where I am going. We need not deny the loss we carry or the story of our own life challenge. It has made us into something new but we can dart and shimmy upward with a hopeful trying, with an eagerness to live life trusting in the promise of our awesome God.

I will see you in the pond.