It had been a long stretch of days—
the kind that slip quietly into your body before you realize what’s happening. Muscles cinch tight, breath rides high in the chest, vision narrows—not by choice but by necessity. At first, I didn’t name it as stress; it simply felt like the natural rhythm of a month in which every sentence came slow and hard, each word drawn through the tollgate of honesty. I had been writing about communion—not the softened version that sentiment sometimes prefers, but the deeper truth of what it costs to belong to one another.

Layered on top of that was the work of preparation: guiding my aging mother through an unfamiliar airport, navigating stubborn snow and the restless tide of holiday travelers heading south. These things were not the focus today, and yet they formed the unseen scaffolding beneath me as I found myself—unexpectedly—reclined on a chaise lounge beside a quiet pool in the late afternoon.

The light had gentled by then. The air felt newly washed, carrying the kind of clarity you notice only after a storm. Above me stretched an unbroken expanse of blue, so rich it seemed freshly made.

From the patio’s edge, three palm trees reached upward. Two stood mature and self-assured, their height carried without effort. The other was still on its way—learning how far it could stretch toward the sky. Nearby, several smaller palms crouched low, unable yet to catch the wind.

But the tall ones did. And somewhere between their height and the movement of the air, something within me began to shift.

The fronds—long, feathered fingers—unfurled outward from the crown and swayed, slowly at first, then with more intention. They leaned into the wind as if in conversation with it, the air slipping through their green filigree in rhythms both ancient and new. Their meeting with the breeze made its own language: a hush like the soft patter of rain passing through, then the gentle cadence of hushed applause, then—when the gusts gathered—the rolling note of surf meeting sand.

It was nothing dramatic. Just wind and leaves. And yet my breath was lowering into the place it was meant to fill. My shoulders loosened. My body remembered itself.

To watch these palms—rooted, supple, entirely themselves—was to be granted permission. Permission not to hold the world together with clenched fists. Permission to bend without breaking. Permission to trust that the ground beneath would hold.

I don’t know how long we sat together, the palms and I. Long enough for the day to soften at its edges. Long enough to recall that what sustains communion with one another, and with God, is not our striving but trust—trust that what roots us in love is strong enough to withstand the wind, and that what bends us is shaping us toward grace.

And then, awe.

Maybe it began in the unthinking moments, when my body unclenched without trying. Maybe in the palm’s patient music, reminding me that beauty is alive, always in motion. Or perhaps it had been present from the beginning, waiting for me to pause long enough to be gathered whole into sway, sound, and light.

Awe has its own kind of alchemy. It draws us in from the fringes, turning distance into presence. It returns us to the truest self—not the one braced against lists and deadlines, but the one still tethered to the Creative Breath that set the galaxies spinning, that coaxed palms from seed to height, that shaped both our rootedness and our reach. Awe is never solitary. It is fellowship with what is, and with the One who is ever making all things new.

Perhaps in the coming week, one of nature’s quiet invitations will find you: the slant of morning light across your threshold, the silhouette of bare branches against a winter sky, the shimmer of water just before the wind claims it. The created world does not demand your attention, but it waits patiently, certain that as you receive what it offers, you will remember Whose image you bear. And in remembering, you will find not duty but courage—the courage to live awake again.