I Stand with the Trees

I woke up at six this morning.

The realities of last night still with me, I opened my Bible, desperate for anything that could possibly bring hope. I opened to Ephesians 3:17 and read "And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge--that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God."
I mourned for the days that I knew and felt that fullness of the love of God--the love that I didn't understand and was so happy in that mystery, despite my desire to understand everything. But the question popped into my head: What does it mean to be rooted and established in love?
And then I remembered the words from someone who cares greatly for me last night..."There must be some unconfessed sin causing this gap."
Truth.
But what was it?

So I got up and took a walk. The morning was cold and felt appropriate to what I was feeling inside. As I walked, I listened to the words of artists who put their feelings and passion into words and musical notes, and I let them wash over me. My brokenness revealed itself. I seemed to blend into the ugliness of the brown, dead-like trees around me, with pieces of themselves strewn about and surrounded by their fallen counterparts. I kept walking, and the sun began to glimmer over the horizon. The color of the radiant, warm light made the trees seem even more the color of a bleak and benumbed inner tomb.
And then I looked up.
The uppermost tips of the branches were taking on a glowing hue. The sunlight was coming to reconcile the trees to their true color. The darkness had only given a distorted image of what they really were. The upward slope of the branches stretched themselves toward the light that was beginning to cast itself. I watched for what must have been fifteen minutes, the whole time a desire growing in me to be like those lucky scepters that sparkled like jewels had been embedded in them. I wanted the light to touch me. I wanted to shine in my truest color, too.

I climbed a rock to get higher. The sun, once devising where it would deposit its light upon was now hurling and scattering it on everything. The light hit the tip of my head and I felt its warmth start to seep and drain. I planted my feet on that rock, lifted my eyes, and waited to be transformed.

And there I stood with the trees.