I spent my early childhood living in a mid-sized city. There was a grocery store and gas station across our busy street. Behind our house was an alley with a cement plant. Traffic was constant between the cars in the front and the trucks in the back, and there was not much nature around. We had some bushes in front and a small yard of grass around to the back. Mom told me that most of the trees that were there when they bought the house had died from a disease, but a few survived. Our street was not a pretty place. Several houses down, there was a bridge over a creek. The traffic sound was so loud, you could not hear the water move. I used to stand on my side of the bridge (I was not allowed to cross it), and I would drop a leaf down, down into the flowing water—watch it float away and wonder where it would go.
Our family outgrew that house, and crime creeped into the neighborhood, so my parents moved us to a town about six miles east. At the end of our new street were some woods, and in those woods was a creek. It was beautiful there, and it was peaceful. There were no busy streets nearby, so you could not only hear the water move over the rocks, but also the wind rustle the leaves of the trees. I did not believe it when my mother told me it was the same creek that flowed under the bridge by our first house. I wondered if any of my leaves had made that far. I hoped so.
Everyone is going through difficult things right now. Life is loud and confusing, and these are definitely turbulent times. I often picture myself dropping those leaves off of that bridge. In some ways, our lives are like my leaves in that creek. We may not know where we are going, but we should remember that this turmoil just may drift us to a place of beauty and peace. I hope so.