For 10 days, purple flowers blanketed the forest floor in the Hallerbos, enchanting thousands of people.
The bluebells do it every year again: prepare all year, to give everyone a peek into perfection for just a few days.
They are fragile, vulnerable, and all over the place.
If someone steps on the flowers, they never recover. But they’ll leave their seeds.
If uncaring shoes walk on the bare forest floor more then 25 times, the seeds have no chance to take root. The surrounding flowers take years and then some, to encroach on the empty spot and fill it up again.
It can be hard to get back up when all life seems to do is knock you down. Again. And again. And again.
It can seem like it isn’t worth it, when people keep walking over you like you aren’t even there.
When life drags you down with yet another wave, leaving you in the forgotten depths of the ocean.
It’s the most cliche thing to say…
But you’re never alone.
Even in the depths of despair or in the black numbness that envelops you, making you oblivious to despair and joy and any feelings at all.
And so even when nobody else in your life gets it, He gets to say “I understand”.And He’s committed to being there, wherever you are.
But the hyacinths whisper the secret of the forests’ true age. Because they wouldn’t be there, growing like blanket that covers the forest floor if this soil wasn’t ancient, rich and if things hadn’t been born, grown and died here for centuries.
The old trees’ hard work was not in vain. Chopped down by soldiers who needed the wood to fortify their trenches, the trees left a source of life behind in the old earth.
And so the past and the present and the future all live together here, making breathtaking beauty.
Just wait, and see.
Don’t push on if you need to wait and don’t run if you need to rest. Don’t be afraid of the silence.
The seed of a hyacinth takes 5 years to grow. If the ground has been trampled, it will take years longer for the earth to soften, for the plants around to fill in the empty spaces by creeping a little nearer with every generation.
Underneath the hard layer, the soil is still good, and once the cover is softened enough, the plants will take root and be fed and live.
As will you.
Because the soil your soul is planted in will carry you through.And when you emerge from the darkness, you will find that beauty is all around.
Was there all this time, even when you couldn’t see it.
You are always safe in the hands of the One who made you, the One who knows you.
The One who knows exactly what is wrong with the world, and what is still right
The One who knows how to make all things right again.
He made all things good the first time.
And then He came back and did it again.
The second time, it did not look like we’d like for it to look like. It requires our faith, our trust and our searching eyes.
As if we are on a treasure hunt, and the clues will lead us home.
And every day of our lives, we have the choice to see the perfection, or the decay.
To follow the light, or the dark.
To see the good in the people who surround us, or the annoying little habits.
To close our eyes because the discouraging days are just too dark and too long.
Or to see the enchantment anyway.
I can’t recall if I’ve said it already, but I love your Hallerbos posts. <3
Wat mooi! Dank je wel. Ik zou het wel eens in het echt willen zien, dat bos.
Prachtig hoe God zo’n rijke lessen en waarheid in de natuur legt.
Ik heb nog steeds heimwee naar het Hallerbos.:) Een van de mooiste dingen die ik ooit gezien heb.