Although I try to maintain a positive perspective, I'm not always someone to look for the silver lining. Sometimes, though, it is so obvious that it almost blinds me with its glare. Such was the case when I somehow lost myself in cleaning out part of the attic -- a task I hadn't planned to do ahead of time (which is so unlike me) and one that became an unexpected journey.
It started because I knew I had to find my long-forgotten, deeply buried diploma. Our oldest son was soon to turn 7, and that is the age by which we were required to register our home school with the state of North Carolina. One of the requirements is some type of proof that the home school educator has an education (high school and/or college). I have been home-schooling him for three years, but the state doesn't even allow us to register until the student is at least 6. Of course I put it off until the very end of the month before his birth month. (Technically, I think I could have waited until he was almost 8, so maybe I am finally starting to overcome my tendency to procrastinate! No; I just didn't bother to find out the details of the rule in order to make myself believe the deadline was looming, kind of like when you set all of your clocks 10 minutes fast to trick yourself into being on time. The real trick is to make yourself "forget" that the clocks are wrong. Right?)
So it was supposed to be a fairly busy weekend, with my husband working late on Friday and most of the day Saturday along with my conducting a spa part on Saturday. However, we were hit with a small ice storm, and since we live in North Carolina, all of the schools and businesses shut down on Friday afternoon as soon as the raindrops began to take on an icy sheen. Suddenly, my husband was headed home with directions not to come in on Saturday, and I received news that my party host wanted to postpone until the following weekend. So, there I was -- iced in, clear schedule, and a looming home school registration deadline.
I only intended to hunt for the diploma, reorganize a bit, and have everything packed back up in the same day. (Have I ever mentioned that I also have a tendency to underestimate grossly the amount of time most tasks, projects, and trips from point A to point B will take? Just ask my husband.) The diploma ended up being in a box only about halfway toward the back of the attic space, but by the time I had discovered it, I was in too deep. I had to keep going.
By this point I was seeing bountiful evidence that the squirrels we suspected were entering parts of our attic (through holes woodpeckers have drilled in various places of our cedar siding) had indeed been infiltrating and having a field day, as it were. They have a hundred trees and plenty of woodsy ground space upon which to roam freely on our little third of an acre, and yet somehow they found it necessary to use our attic as their litter box. I could suppose they thought it only fair since the family dog uses their space to relieve himself, but we all know squirrels aren't that bright.
One by one, I opened boxes and Rubbermaid containers, sorting useful objects, mementos to bury back in the attic, and trash. I tried my best not to notice the crunch of old squirrel feces beneath my feet. Carry on, I told myself. Just carry on.
Finally, I came to the very last box. It was buried the deepest, which meant it was closest to the squirrels' springtime exit and entry points. I dragged it into my bedroom and was sickened by the condition of the box. It had obviously been tampered with, corners eaten through, and the tape was barely holding on after years of weathering the extreme temperatures of the attic. I opened the box with a general feeling of disgust. Layers of packing paper were covered with squirrel poo and acorn shells, some of which had not only been opened but also shredded to tiny pieces in the process. I had no idea what lay under those layers of paper, and I wasn't sure it was worth finding out.
At last I mustered the strength, or maybe curiosity got the best of me. What I uncovered took my breath away. There, buried deep under the paper and long forgotten in the deepest part of the attic, was my childhood: little keepsake Precious Moments knick-knacks and ribbon bookmarks with porcelain pendants; a funny-looking doll that had come with "Luvie" on the name tag and reminded me of how I had called my adoptive mom "Lovey" until I was 4 and decided on my own to start calling her "Mom;" a beautiful Native American doll my grandmother had given me that remained lovely even though time (and perhaps squirrels) had left her headdress frayed and featherless; a Precious Moments doll I had worked to earn because I saw her in the Christian bookstore in Great Falls and just couldn't stop imagining her as my own; and several small tokens and scraps and containers that could mean nothing to anyone in the world except the little girl who had fingered them, dreamed with them, stared at them, and stored treasures inside of them. She had grown up, and many of her dreams had come true, but to the adult version of herself, that childhood was such a distant memory that it seemed another lifetime entirely, a dream that suddenly became vividly real again as tangible artifacts were unearthed.
Incriminating evidence against the hated squirrels covered my worthless yet priceless findings. And yet I found myself smiling, remembering fondly, and increasingly ignoring the mess they had left behind -- even as I picked pieces of it out of doll hair. I guess you could say that is when the silver lining struck me.
Life is full of tattered remains of memories, painful ruins, dirty leftovers from wrongs inflicted, and all kinds of situations that leave us cleaning up after others. Often we have created our own messes and don't need anyone else to help us do that. Other times we are blindsided either because of someone else's selfishness or because life is just hard. Sometimes there is no one to blame.
No matter the cause, we have a choice. We can choose to work through the pain and the disgusting remains, uncovering a better version of ourselves if we choose to allow ourselves to grow through the process. We can discover the treasures among trash, no matter how seemingly small or insignificant they seem to others.
There's the rub: Sometimes no one else can see treasures in my trash. To others' eyes, it may all be worthless trash. But God and I, we remember things about that trash that no one else on earth may know. We have come through it all together, and He has made something beautiful of my mess. I can choose to look only at the mess, or I can open my eyes to the growth, the glory, the treasures uncovered . . . even through painful times, the rays of hope and joy piercing the dark clouds.
If you're in the midst of one of those dark times now, please know that you have my compassion, my empathy, and my prayers. I don't want to sound trite or flippant about the struggles we face. I just believe that the clouds will clear, and as they do, we will catch glimpses of silver linings. After all, we don't see rainbows in the sky on clear, sunny, cloudless days. Rainbows appear after the storm, and they always, always remind me of God's precious promises, sometimes forgotten until I go through some yucky stuff and have to dig deep to find them again. My Savior and His Word -- those are the real treasures.