It’s Hard to Settle – Thoughts of a Wondering Wanderer

Grace Fisher

 

I feel my husband lean over me in the night, just barely hearing the rustle of the curtain over the thundering chaos of the rain. The darkness is deep, but his concern is the depth of the creek. He murmurs quietly about the intensity of the storm, unable to see the water level. He lays back down next to me in my childhood bed in my parents’ home, his unease mingling with my own. How can you settle down when the sound of rain makes you anxious? How can you sleep soundly when you can’t sleep in your own bed? When you no longer have your own home? But I hold his hand and push all the reassurance I can through our nerves, and silently welcome the same from him.  

 

At church on Sunday, our community asks if we’re getting settled in. I answer that yes, we’re starting to get there. We still have boxes to unpack, and clothes to wash, and things to put in their new places. I ask how things are going for them, and they tell me of the skeleton of their home, stripped down to the muddy studs, waiting for new life and their family to be breathed back into it. How they’re trying to get a contractor to give them a real estimate, not a ransom demand for their safe place.  How they’ll likely try and do most of the work themselves.

 

I drive down the curvy road, heaps of refuse growing smaller and more wretched as time wears on. I breathe out thanks to God at the strides we’ve made the last few weeks. I see out-of-town friends, concern carved in their faces like the creek carved its path through the valleys. Shock and grief swirl in their eyes as they see the destruction for the first time. The wreckage that to us looks like progress.  

 

It’s hard to settle when the very foundation of your home washes away. It’s hard to settle when days stretch to weeks without a place to call your own. It’s hard to settle when the sound of rain makes a pit open up in your stomach like the sinkholes in the road.  

 

While we aren’t yet settled and life still feels slick as river mud, there are footholds. My husband by my side, strengthening me with his constant steadiness. Our family and friends who have opened hearts and homes to us for as long we need. A place to live, to turn slowly and firmly into “home.” Mercies which are new every morning, forming stepping stones on the path towards stability.  

 

“I waited patiently for the Lord, and he turned to me and heard my cry for help. He brought me up from a desolate pit, out of the muddy clay, and set my feet on a rock, making my steps secure. He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God. Many will see and fear, and they will trust in the Lord.” – Psalm 40:1-3

Grace Fisher has spent most of her life in Breathitt County, Kentucky. Grace spent four years as a dyslexia tutor with the Hindman Settlement School and is blessed to continue serving as Member Support Coordinator to their new cohorts of tutors serving across the region. On occasion, Grace dabbles in writing her thoughts on faith and family.