Symbols and Smells

I'm sitting next to a eucalyptus and mint candle with citrus blossom cream on my hands. Someone just sent these to me in a care package in the mail. There's something about a good smell that comforts me. I've been sitting here staring at my wall breathing in the scent of the candle and the cream for a good while now.

This morning grief made it hard for me to get out of bed. I started looking at a piece of artwork by Ned Bustard called, "Cloud of Witnesses." It was published with "A Liturgy for the Loss of a Child" by Douglas McKelvey in Every Moment Holy. In the artwork there's a woman holding a breathless baby surrounded by the saints in heaven who are going to receive the child. I spent a couple hours staring at that picture, looking up all the Christian symbols from church history and trying to guess who each of the people are. I was captivated. Then I asked Jesus if he had an image to express his love for me today.

Symbols really help me. As I think back to the last couple of months of grief I realize how much God has spoken to me through simple symbolic images (palm trees, turtles, holes in fences, puffins, and double bunnies...). I've also had dreams filled with symbolism. The other night I dreamt that my atheist friend had her room filled to the brim with old books. In my dream I told her, "you have to get rid of these books. It's a waste of resources and energy to have them all here." When I first woke up, I didn't think the dream was important but then I thought about what books symbolize: knowledge. I immediately thought of the line I had just written in my blog about not being ready to let go of knowing. I interpreted the dream to mean that a part of myself (perhaps the more grounded part of me) was trying to speak to another part of myself (the anxious, traumatized, mind-spinning part): You can be freed from needing to figure out why your daughter died or what will happen in your future. Trying to be like God who is all-knowing is draining you.

I'm thankful for God's gifts of symbols and smells. Perhaps they are part of the antidote to my need to be all-knowing. They help my spinning brain relax and move me into simple surrender.