Here in the Land of the Living

by Caitlin Lore

HERE IN THE LAND OF THE LIVING

For years, I prayed that the Lord would deliver me from the wastelands. Plant a juniper in the desert of my womb. A hazel-eyed, bright blonde little one.

But He didn’t.

My prayers were visceral, repetitive, and over time, my laments grew more weary. A keening from my soul that I felt would never leave me. 

For years, I lived in so much despair. So much a valley of the shadow of death. The flat Midwest where we lived became a barren space for my soul and my womb, both aching for more. With every negative test, every declining lab, I stopped seeing goodness—the mountaintop dream slipping further and further away. 

As I cried out for help over and over again, grief slipped in, obscuring my ascent.

//

We moved homes, hoping to heal, into a house I had found ten years before but never expected would be ours. A home full of cherry hardwood floors, stained glass windows, and so much space that we could breathe again.

It was much too big for us, and yet, we filled it with friends, our rooms rarely empty of gatherings and fellowships. Tears and joy. Hobbit Day parties that brought me back to myself.

Though we lived on a busy street, we named this home Loreshire, a nod to our favorite stories and to the peace we felt within the walls. With each new gathering, each fellowship, something broke free.

It would take me three years to understand Loreshire was a gift for healing. God was watching over our comings and goings.

Even though a lonely mountain loomed in my peripherals during those days, Loreshire reminded me of His goodness, and I began to lift up my eyes. 

//

Just as we settled, a job opportunity came. Another path for the military life—again. 

We were no strangers to it, my husband a veteran of the Iraq War. It had been our life plan to finish school in the Midwest and then return to the military, but the doors stayed shut, leaving that imagined life out of reach.

I grew accustomed to the valley. Years of rejection, both in body and my own vocation, left my soul weary, unable to dream. 

This new job would mean starting over at nearly forty; time apart and potential deployments as we went back to military-adjacent living. It would mean uprooting everything in midlife and literally crossing mountains.

It would mean leaving our beloved Loreshire, where, even in the valley, I knew the Lord was still with me. 

Not a week before he accepted, my last round of tests revealed the chances of a biological child would never come to fruition. 

Perhaps the death of one dream would lead to another. 

So, we prayed:

“Lord, go before us.

Plant junipers in the wasteland.

Keep my soul in you.”

//

We moved to the mountains without ever seeing them.

Where everything once felt scattered, here I was whole.

Less than twenty-four hours in the shell of a new home, it felt right and good.

Now I sit in our back room, a sunlit space with floor-to-ceiling windows on three sides, listening to the Mississippi Kite call. 

The backyard seems a wasteland, years of old leaves layered up while this home sat empty. And yet, so many birds visit, nestling among the limbs of the trees while the grey squirrels play and hide their acorns in the sandy soil.

This ground will need work to be a shire worthy of a fellowship, but for now, there is still life. 

Here in this house on a hill, I am surrounded by sun and trees. There are no junipers, but the long-leaf pines of the Carolinas have welcomed us. We have boxes nestled into corners of every room, unpacking still left to do, but this home feels so much like hope that I cannot bear it.

//

For weeks, I held the hope that I was pregnant. I told no one, save for my husband, who did not want to believe the news either, for fear of too much hope.

But still we dreamed. Discussed names. Fretted about space. 

Said it would be just like God to move us across the country, plant new things in our lives, then give us a miracle, a little juniper.

But He didn’t.

Perimenopause is so very much like early pregnancy. Similar symptoms carving away at your heart, leaving you in wait.

Yet this time, while grief slipped in, the despair that once held me no longer did. 

I am learning that so many things depend upon the tension that builds them. 

The valleys and mountains. Grief and hope. 

One carving away at the other, who anchors herself, even in times of despair.

A decade ago, I imagined my life differently, every prayer answered and dream fulfilled.

But now we live in the Sandhills, where the rolling dunes remind me of the faithfulness behind and ahead. 

The Lord has planted us in the wasteland of so many, here in the land of the living.

In this rolling, transitory neighborhood full of stories of grief, we dine weekly with a dear neighbor, swap furniture with another as we update our homes, and care for each other in ways unimagined. 

There is no mountaintop, but goodness has found us here, and I am beginning to see how we are the junipers. 

CAITLIN LORE

Caitlin Lore is a Midwest grown, Southeast transplant who often writes about the interplay of faith, grief, and midlife on her Substack, The Time Given. She is a former English teacher turned professor who also writes children's fiction. In her free time, Caitlin is rarely without a book, enjoys gardening, and dabbles in several eclectic hobbies which inevitably end up in her stories. Find her on Instagram @caitlin_lore or caitlinlore.com.