“Not every lake dreams to be an ocean. Blessed are the ones who are happy with whom they are.”
~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

Last week I was blessed once again to be on retreat at one of my favorite places just west of the Twin Cities. Christ the King Retreat Center is situated on Lake Buffalo and all the rooms look out onto this body of water. As I was unpacking my bag and looking out at the lake as I have done so many times, I had a huge ‘ah-ha’ moment. I had never seen this lake in its watery form! I had only ever seen it frozen! It seems I have only been on retreat here in the winter months and had only enjoyed the beauty of this place when ice houses colorfully dotted the frozen surface and snowmobiles turned it into the road less traveled.

I laughed out loud at this thought. And just to punctuate my realization, a pontoon boat slowly made its way before my window, sending lazy ripples on the autumn lake scene. As I opened the window, the solo quack of a duck swimming by added the final note to this unfolding picture. “The water moves!”, I thought. Indeed, it does. In certain seasons. Under specific conditions.

Over my short retreat time there were many lovely moments spent looking at the lake. One of my favorite things to do in this setting is to pull a chair up to the window and have my morning cup of coffee as the sun rises. This particular morning offered up not only the sunrise but a light show of a far-off storm. Light danced in undulating yellow and white puffs across the ever-increasing glow of the morning sky. Someplace, out there, a storm was brewing.

This experience of seeing the lake with new eyes, in a new season, unfrozen became metaphor for me. I wondered at the many times when things in my life have seemed forever frozen, without movement. There have been problems that seemed to never know movement or resolution. Sometimes the systems in which I have lived, worked, functioned, seem frozen in a block of ice that is un-meltable. There have even been some relationships that could not give way to any kind of visible growth. Any of this sound familiar to you?

But then something changes. The season shifts. The climate of feeling or working moves in a particular direction and,before I know it, there is change. What once was solid and unmoving is flowing in new and different ways. All that existed beneath may still be there holding on for dear life but something has shifted and there is movement.

As I walked along the shores of this lake which would not hold people or cars or snowmobiles as I had seen it do so many times before, I thought of all the lives it was touching in different ways. In this form its waters allowed for diving and swimming and floating. The buoyancy that is absent in winter came to life in these summer and fall days. There was a lightness to the life it offered up. What had once been frozen now offered a gentler, more flowing movement.

There are gifts in both the movement of the water and its solid form. The true offering is in recognizing beauty and wonder in both and in remembering that there is a season for these varied lives in both the lake and the living of our own days.

For this reminder, I am grateful.