It breaks off. It falls quickly...at a rapid unforgiving speed. It hits the frigid water, and cuts beneath the murky depths of the tide. It is jagged and sharp and asks no forgiveness of someone who may step on it, or catch an elbow on it as they dive into the depths. It is unapologetically real...it sticks out, and waits.
It is grief. It is change...it is a stone.
An interesting understanding has graced me in the last weeks and days. Time has a way of refining the hurts in life. Of course...everyone has heard that "time heals all wounds". I think that's a patronizing statement in the thick of a crisis. It means nothing as a giant stands on your expectations of life...or laughs haughtily at an incomprehensible loss. But as time separates you from the confusion of the puzzle...it gently assembles your life back together...corner to corner...piece by piece.
Time is like sand against that stone in the sea. At first, surely, that stone will cause harm and inflict pain on whoever crosses its path, for it is freshly separated from its base. The separation by nature has caused it to tumble and shatter...out of control until it lodges in a place where the weathering can begin. That stone will defiantly lodge in the mud...it will strike unexpectedly to passersby...causing a wound... leaving a scar. But with each touch...with each grain that swirls around it...with each ebb of the tide, it will change, it will diminish. The bladed edges will melt..and it will become something new.
Someday... it will be a smooth, glasslike thing of beauty. It will have a history, it will have a million untold stories of contact. Each interaction will shift that instrument of pain into a cool glistening and polished gem of sorts.
Perhaps, someday... that stone will find itself on a fireplace mantle...or maybe on a beautiful coffee table. It could very easily work as a paper weight in an office...or as a door stop in a bedroom.
Time will refine those pains in life that injure us. It will carve out a softer, more peaceful identity for each and every one. That peace will come over time...over the days, over the tides of life. It will manifest in understanding, or at the very least... surrendered acceptance. As for the stone, it is still what it has always been...a stone. But now it's found beauty, and purpose. For it has changed forever all that has touched it....and all that it has touched.
