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Where do You Love?

Where do You Love?
Spokane River, Downtown


A friend asked me today, during a walk along the Spokane River, if I loved New Zealand beyond Pete. Meaning, do I love the place? Its people? The rhythm of its days, the smell of the air, the potential it holds for me and my kids?


I've answered this question many times, and the reply usually goes like this: "I do love the country. It's beautiful; I have good friends there; I can run outside year-round. I don't like unheated homes, the high cost of living and hanging wash on a line to dry, but I think I can work around those challenges."


After my friend and I parted ways, a new-ish thought hit me as my minivan and I bounced along the frontage road that leads to I-90: Loving a place and its people has more to do with how it helps you grow during a particular time in your life than anything else. Set aside the statistical abstract, including your job, cost of living, home and daily routine. Why do you love (or not love) where you live? You love a place when you love its people. You love a place that allows you to fill life's canvas with color - splatters, swirls, loops, still-life and abstract, impressionism, even surrealism. Your place promotes re-invention, creativity, new friends and often, new relationships that stretch your canvas beyond self-imposed limits.
Sunrise, Mount Maunganui


You especially love a place that's helped heal your broken heart. How can you not love that place? And yes, it helps if that place is (as a friend in Florida described her new home) "mind-numbingly beautiful..."


That's why I love New Zealand. While I could've chosen Ohio, Hawaii, France, Asia, Mexico or even my backyard as sanctuary - a place to start healing from Sean's death - I didn't. I chose New Zealand. Or maybe it chose me.


Why do we love a place? Maybe, if you're a refugee from life, you love best the places that help you heal.

Comments

  1. SuzanneMay 29, 2012 at 10:11 PM

    Beautiful, Dawn! I couldn't agree more.While I have had my fair share of grief and loss throughout my life, many times have I felt like a refugee just in the last year over the gradual loss of relationship with our eldest son (18) to a world drugs & alcohol. While in the thickest part of grief I have found a new almost bitter-sweet love for my God, my church and church family who have carried us through the nightmare. Thankfully our family of "4 remaining" is healing with the love and support of so many and beginning to walk on our own again (kind of like a toddler). We experience more moments of "normalcy" and fewer of that refugee like state we lived in for too long. I don't know if our normal will ever be the same again, but we sure "love best the people and places that are helping us heal". God bless you, Dawn for sharing yourself so candidly with all of us. Love, your childhood friend~ Suzanne

    ReplyDelete
  2. Dawn PickenMay 29, 2012 at 10:23 PM

    Oh, Suzanne - I'm sorry to hear about your struggles. I wish none of us had learned empathy the hard way. We'll create the New Thing wherever we plant ourselves, won't we? I hope the next months bring more peace to you and your family.
    xxoo

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