Throwing Beauty into the river of life

​Since I was a kid, I’ve loved throwing rocks and twigs into rivers. I watch them leave my hand and then sink into the water or even float off. And I wonder, where do they go?

Where did the river take them?

I was reminded yesterday that life is sort of that way. Many days we throw things into the river of life and wonder, where did that go? Only, unlike the river, sometimes life answers.

Earlier this summer, I led a study of the book “What Happened to You” by Oprah Winfrey and Dr. Bruce Perry. Our group met every other week for two hours to discuss two chapters at a time.

Yesterday, I had a meeting with a supervisor of two of the regulars in that study. I told their supervisor how much I appreciated those two being in the study. They had big hearts; they added a richness to the discussion that would have been missed without them.

The supervisor then told me a story about one of those two participants.

After the participant left our study, she started her own study of the book. She started it with women in a local prison. Only, because of COVID, she couldn’t go into the prison, so she had to conduct the study by writing individual letters to each participant.

Essentially, she did a pen pal book study.

It turns out, one of the prisoners was transferred in the middle of the study. She was afraid that she was going to miss out. She had a phone number for the office of the supervisor I met with yesterday. So the woman asked her father to call that number and let them know where she’d been moved to.

The supervisor told me the dad sounded uncertain; he had no idea what he was getting into making the call. She said it sounded like maybe this woman and the dad didn’t have a great relationship, but he really wanted to help his daughter.

And he did - because the information got relayed and the letters resumed.

As the supervisor told me this story, I felt myself getting emotional. I found myself listening to life answer my question: what happened to that book study when I threw it into the stream of life?

Life doesn’t owe us answers, but it’s a beautiful thing when it offers them.

It’s a beautiful thing to discover the heart of a woman willing to sit down and pen letters to prisoners when the doors to the prison get shut – refusing to let the flow of life get stopped.

It’s a beautiful thing to discover a prisoner breathing in hope instead of feeling it sucked away.

It’s a beautiful thing to discover a dad taking a chance on calling a stranger to help his daughter, and then imagining the sense of joy he felt in doing so.
 
It’s a beautiful thing to imagine the difference this flow of life has made on a woman who will get a second chance at life when she is released early next year.

I am here sharing this story this morning to remind you that life flows downstream. We can’t change that, but we can change what goes with that flow. Life takes with it into the world the beauty we throw into the stream.

And the ugly…

If one day you’re standing next to that stream and you ask, I wonder where that went - what kind of answer do you want to hear and feel and maybe even shed a tear to?

That answer will largely be influenced by what you throw into that stream today.

Be encouraged and throw something beautiful in. Throw and listen - because sometimes - life will gift you a beautiful story in return.