For two decades two relics have hung around our yards and gardens. They've followed us to three different homes. A skull, white as chalk, porous as fine sponge, and a single deer horn.
The horn doesn't get much notice, but the skull raises curiosity. "Uh... what's up with that?" guests have stuttered.
"Oh, that's my last boss," I sometimes say, ignoring their sucked-in breath and moving on to something else.
Truthfully, the skull - cow, with no horns - entered our lives long ago, during a year I'll never forget.
After an exhausting four-year posting in a highly stressful church, the Preacher badly needed a change. On the night he came home upchucking the bile of an acrimonious board meeting, I told him enough was enough. Even our two children felt the stress.
We decided to become country people. Moved our family to a rented home overlooking the breathtaking Beaver Valley. We got two goats, three rabbits, and pulled the kids out of school to teach them ourselves.
The Preacher took a lower stress job and learned to drive tractor. He was so used up, I didn't think he would ever pastor again.
Pastureland backed our home for miles, field upon field separated by long rock walls and distinct lines of bush and trees. With no grazing livestock in the pastures, the children, then ages nine and eleven, sampled an intoxicating freedom. That first summer and fall, before snows sheathed the fields, they roamed endlessly, as I once had on the fir-tipped end of a quiet Pacific inlet.
They'd already explored the first tree line, they told me one morning. And the second. "Mom," they said, eyes shining, "today we're goin' to the THIRD tree line!"
Grabbing a snack, they set out for adventure, but returned shortly, reports of their explorations tumbling from their lips. "Come back with us," they begged. I laced on my runners, and we set out, our irascible red cocker prancing ahead.
Ten minutes later, we arrived at a cool forested grove, cathedral-like in its solitude. A weathered shack stood off to one side, a forgotten hunters' cabin, perhaps. Maybe the remnant of a first homestead. But I had no doubt that cattle once huddled there, taking shelter from the withering heat and extreme cold common in that area.
The children found the skull and horn in that grove. When we left Beaver Valley a year later, they came along, reminders of a remarkable, healing year. Like the prophet Ezekiel's vision, our withered and disconnected spiritual bones had knit together again. So had our family. God had renewed us for service.
Burned out? Got a deep-down feeling that God is nudging you into something new? Get away, before you come apart. Find a quiet place. Listen hard. And pray long. Then follow God out. But bring back something to remind you, even if it's just an old bone.
