Return to Dust

I noticed it the first time I drove by, and then again, and again. I drove by it every day on my way to work because there was nothing else to see. It sat completely alone in the middle of a vast flat sea of gravel and desert scrub, and yet close enough so that I can see it leaning one knee, the rest of it slumping down in surrender and abandonment. It seemed to be calling to me, like a needy person holding a battered "need help" sign at an intersection in the city. I merely looked at it for many weeks as I drove by.

I felt just as abandoned. It was my fault. There was this really nice guy at church who wanted to get something going, at least he hinted and smiled at me and he was nice enough but I wasn't ready. I wasn't ready to trust. I felt broken down and used because before him, I allowed myself to be molded into something I wasn't.

Just because a man wanted it, I allowed myself to be turned into a woman who ate salads and worked out an hour each day, who wore high heels and short skirts and drank a lot. That wasn't the real me. I was a cap-wearing, tennis shoe, blue jean kind of person. In just over a few months, I forgot who I really was because I wanted to please a man. It was all about him. He never asked about my day, or asked how I was doing, or just hugged me. He never gave me anything, except sex, and that was all about him too. And then, without warning, he told me to move out. He was with a much younger woman.

One unusually cloudy day, when I was driving to the city, and not to work, I stopped to look at it. It was calling to me. I stepped out of the car, and soon I was crawling between two very loose barbed wires on a broken down fence to get closer.

The old barn, left to self-destruct without anyone caring, seemed larger and more imposing as I approached it. The open barn door was on the other side of the corner that was kneeling. The floor was earthen and swept clean by the dry desert wind that blew through the cracks in the wooden walls.

Inside the cavity of the walls, there was an aerie silence, a hush. I saw no bugs, snakes, or owls- nothing alive, and yet I felt welcomed. The ceiling, with no holes yet in the roof, was high in the middle, and a loft with a ladder was still in place on each side. One side of the barn, the side with the kneeling corner, let in light, even on this cloudy day.

I thought the barn wood might be valuable, that it could be sanded, sliced, and stained to make beautiful kitchen cabinets.

I stood in the heart and took a deep breath. It was like visiting a very old person in the nursing home. A person who accepts the way it is, a person whose entire life had shrunk small enough to fit between four bare walls. And yet, a person bound in complacency and peace, trusting others to care.

It was time for me to trust. The old barn told me that. I had to begin from the inside, to accept the person living in my skin. No more plastic veneer, no more artificial relationships, no high walls, and no pretending. Just as I could see daylight through the cracks in the old barn, I could see myself more clearly through my brokenness. The tears helped wash away the self-loathing.

In the distance, I could see someone looking at me, I called to him and opened my arms.

Some day, another knee will bend, the roof will collapse, the walls will close on themselves and we will return to the earth and turn to dust but another tree will sprout and create a living space for the next inhabitant.