looking for peace

For over five weeks now I have found myself, morning and night, putting on chore boots and coat and heading out to the barn alone.  This job has never been mine before.  At first I felt lost there, it seemed foreign and lonely.  Fears would quickly arise in the dark of the night, panic even, would set in as I walked to the darkened barn.  I wasn't sure how I would do it.  Any of it.  The weight of the diagnosis, the uncertainty, the wait, it all seemed huge in those early morning or late evening hours. 

With time some of that has changed.  Even though those chores take me all of 20 minutes, I have found in that barn a quiet place to shed some tears.  To chuck some hay around hard and let the anger flow. Now the darkness of the barn has turned toward warmth with the bare bulbs switched on and the smell of fresh hay all around.  The rustling sound of the birds finding their evening roosts in the rafters, the sheep and horses munching contentedly.  There is something there that encircles me with strength and repose.

And in the early morning hours the world is fresh with hope and I can feel it.  There is beauty all around and I am reminded. 

Andy gets out every day now for a walk or two.  Mostly alone, to move his body, to meditate on healing, to breathe in the beauty around us. 

In the barn or on the path through the pasture, alone or together, we are walking this road looking for peace and finding some.