Day Sixteen: Zechariah 10
Why Springtime? Why choose to leave when there is so much growth and beauty around us? This is the time of flowers…fruit trees and wildflowers everywhere…a mass of pink and white blossoms and of red poppies. A time for harvesting barley in the Jordan valley. The pomegranate blooms profusely. Why now? Perhaps he hoped to leave before the wilting heat of summer or the bitter cold of winter. After the rains, but before the dry hot winds.
But my heart and my mind…they are frozen in perpetual winter. Nothing grows in me save my anguish and my pain. Where is Benjamin now? Is he safe? Is he happy? Is he alive?
Elizabeth continues to be my shadow. Though she speaks but little, she is some comfort to me. She is another soul that longs for what is no longer. In this, we are kindred spirits…more than any other person on the compound. Aaron says nothing when he is in my presence…what do we have to say to each other? Our lives have ground to a halt in what once was, while the days continue to move towards what will be.
But I do not want Elizabeth with me when I go to the river. There I must be alone…with Benjamin, or what remains of him in my memories. Somehow, I must convince her that I am in no danger of injury…self-inflicted or otherwise.
So, my pacing now expands to the land around the compound walls. We walk among the blossoming trees and under the lofty palms…a walk I used to enjoy in another life. I mindlessly pluck out a weed and immediately feel a stab of regret. I just plucked up a living thing. A weed, yes…regarded as little more than an irritant by some…an unwanted growth. But that is what some think of my Benjamin…my older son and my community, plucked him out of our present, like an unwanted weed.
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