Walking Diaries #1 with Sarah Bahiraei
Searching for What is True and Good: A reminder that God holds all things together
Welcome to the Walking Diaries where each month a friend of mine will share a story/reflection/poem/photo essay from a walk they took. Through their words and pictures, they’ll show and tell what the walk meant to them, and how they grew from it. And with each diary shared, I hope you’ll be encouraged to lace up your shoes and put one foot in front of the other.
The first Walking Diary is from my friend
. Sarah and I met online through the Exhale community of creative mothers. From the beginning, I’ve been drawn to Sarah’s way with words, her hope, and the way she weaves faith and daily life. She currently lives in Turkey with her husband and daughter. Leave a comment with your thoughts and how you’ve been inspired. Or perhaps, go and take a walk yourself searching for what is good and true.When I first saw the sparrow, I needed it to survive.
The crunch of the plastic stroller wheels over fallen leaves brings me back to the present: a late afternoon walk with my family. Our long shadows stretch across the uneven sidewalk as we walk down the hill from our house. The weather has turned warm this afternoon, the autumn breeze light.
But my mind keeps pulling me back to earlier that morning.
I was sitting with my husband on the couch, looking out the living room window, mugs of hot coffee in our hands. The mugs were one of the first things I bought when I moved to Turkey, walking through the cobblestoned streets in this unfamiliar town. But after nearly a decade of use, they are well-worn, the vermillion red paint chipping off the ceramic, the handles long broken off.
The morning was cool and crisp, the toddling sun a dim smudge on the horizon, and our daughter was sleeping late. The two of us speculated about the colder months ahead. Will they be long and dark? Or short, with Spring quickly making its way around the corner?
And the question that relentlessly plagues our minds: Will we still be here? Or will we finally be released from this place we didn’t choose?
A trio of large black and white magpies circled near our balcony, their raspy chatter bouncing across the courtyard. I didn’t pay them too much attention, still lost in the question marks that dotted our future.
But then my husband sat up straight, nearly knocking my mug onto the carpet. He pointed to one magpie who had something grasped in his claws—a tiny sparrow.
The magpies fluttered and flapped and settled on the other side of our neighbor’s roof, obscuring the scuffle from us. But we could hear the unfortunate scrape and rustle of wings and talons on the gable. Even the olive tree branches outside our window seemed to wave frantically at what was happening.
Something internal in me wanted to stop the fight and save the sparrow that morning, to fling open the back door and strong arm the stupid magpies, shoo them away, scoop up the little bird, and bring her to safety.
My daughter’s quiet, high voice slurs and trembles, bringing me back to our family walk. She’s sleepily singing a made-up song. While she may have slept in that morning, skipping a nap after lunch was the consequence. We decided to take a walk to push through the afternoon purgatory.
The sun is already inching toward the ridges, giving off an ethereal golden glow over everything its light touches: the silver cobwebs strung low along the blades of grass, the leaves shaking and filtering, and the mess of my daughter's curls after a day of playing, her ponytail hanging on for dear life.
My husband asks me to record her singing. He’s maneuvering the stroller over a bumpy patch of sidewalk. “Before we know it, she’ll be out of the house, and we won’t remember what she sounded like at three years old,” he says. And it’s true. I look at videos from just a couple of years ago, when she was so small and round, and marvel at her baby laughs, coos, and cries. Do you remember? Can you believe she was ever like that?
The thing about being so desperate for a situation to change is that it can cloud our vision, the ache of unanswered prayers deadening our senses. Only with murky eyes can we glimpse the little gifts before us.
I record her singing.
She shows us how she can make an eight with her fingers, curling her still-dimpled and chubby hands into two circles and placing them on top of each other. The clouds in the sky stretch like a hundred silky white wings, diffusing the light, mottling the unsteady ground beneath us, and I think about how long we have struggled and how long we have waited for our circumstances to change. Can’t we be given the happiness we so desire right now?
It’s getting close to dinner time, so we change directions and stop at a neighborhood park by our house. There’s a dilapidated play structure on one side of the park and a short stretch of grass on the other. The park is surrounded by old homes still heated by coal, and the pungent scent twirls out of chimneys and floats over us.
A neighbor’s trained pigeons sporadically fly from their spot on the orange ceramic-tiled roof. The flap of their clipped wings echo off the stone walls. The pigeons circle the small park before returning to the roof. It’s as far as they can go.
I hate it here, and I like it here, in a resigned sort of way. I want us to leave, but a small part wants things to stay the same. It is home, and it is not. All of this is true, and I line up the verdicts, one by one, like the birds on the gable of the roof.
A boy rounds the corner, cutting through the park. He has something cupped in both his hands. As he gets closer, we see that it’s a dove. He clutches the bird so tightly that I think it must be dead, but the dove moves her head from side to side in his hands. He tells us he was down by the river when he saw a street cat trying to attack her. So he carried the dove up the hill to bring her home. “To keep her safe,” he says.
As the boy with the dove leaves the park, something clicks in me, and I feel that wretched hope return, the one that rises and falls like the beating of wings.
The three of us, born in three different countries, all living in a land belonging to none of us, yearn to leave and to walk on paths smooth and sure. We thought we would be in a much different place by now, but this protracted waiting season has stretched so much longer than we imagined.
An unnamed ache begins to flutter in my chest.
After returning for dinner and tucking an overtired toddler into bed, I step back from it all.
I don’t know the outcome of the magpie attack earlier this morning, and I’m glad the roof concealed whatever was happening. Maybe it’s because I’m searching so desperately for beacons of hope right now, but something tells me the small sparrow wrestled free, that the laws of nature didn’t go as planned, and the little guy won. I have to believe that.
One day, we will be able to shed the snakeskin of this uncertain life, and shake off all the years of one-sided prayers like a coat grown too small. But now, standing in the darkened hallway, I quietly list: I have a family, a warm home, a healthy daughter and husband, and a God who sees and knows.
This gentle recitation of the good gifts I have calms the fluttering. These are the pillars of my life here. They are solid and true and good.
I don’t know why we are being made to wait. I don’t know why things aren’t changing. But I do know God is holding everything together. So I am going to say, “I trust in God’s plan for my family,” even with a faith that is weak, shriveled, and caked in dirt and dust but somehow still alive.
I recite these pillars again for me—and for him who cannot yet see what’s in front of him. I recite them again for the three of us.
I don’t know what tomorrow will bring, but I know I am in the hands of a God who holds all things together, a God who is holding me.
Beautiful, Sarah. So full of truth, both the pain and the hope that presses on. Glad you pointed us toward this post.
So beautiful, Sarah! I relate to so much of it and wish we could sit down and talk. Or maybe walk and talk! Praying for you.