Spring is Sprung

Every year around this time I start to get so excited to see signs of Spring popping up all over.  I sometimes feel like Buddy the Elf with my enthusiasm about Spring because all I need to see is the tiniest bit of color, a yellow something or other and I'm giddy. My kids know after all these years that I'm going to be pointing and shouting like a mad woman until all of Spring has Sprung. I suppose there are worst things to be, other than overly enthusiastic about nature. I know I have blogged several times over about my love of the seasons and how important I feel every season is. I come by this way of thinking naturally as my heart is beyond sentimental. And a sentimental heart can't help but LOVE the seasons of life and at the same time dread how fast they come and go. Today however, I don't want to talk about my love for seasons.  I want to talk about what I think Spring signifies not only in nature but somehow in my soul this year. To truly enjoy Spring I feel, you have to embrace Winter in all it's darkness. There are dark shadows that brush across all of our lives and we have to fully accept those moments as part of this life. We have to grieve, retreat, and lay dormant for a while, in order that our hearts can heal. Kind of like what the seed does under the snow. But, often times we try to hurry up the winters in our lives.  We don't do pain, darkness, uncomfortableness, and sorrow well.

“It is a very beautiful day. The woman looks around and thinks: 'there cannot ever have been a spring more beautiful than this. I did not know until now that clouds could be like this. I did not know that the sky is the sea and that clouds are the souls of happy ships, sunk long ago. I did not know that the wind could be tender, like hands as they caress - what did I know - until now? Unika Zürn Although, Winters in nature might seem like a time that nothing is really happening we all know that what happens during this season is just as important for the outcomes of the Spring and Summer to come into full bloom. How we process the winters in our souls affects the outcomes of Spring in our hearts.
In a sense I feel like I have circled around a winter in my soul that has lasted longer than just one natural season.  I'm trying to process exactly what that very long winter accomplished, but I think it has something to do with contentment, forgiveness, and moving forward.

For a very long time I have been holding onto a promise that God gave me several years ago when financially we as a family had lost everything and we retreated to the woods of Washington. To say we were on survival mode that first year would be an understatement, but by the second year we were starting to get the hang of living in an 800 sq ft cabin with only one bathroom and we were learning contentment.  Somewhere in that second year God spoke something to my heart that I will never forget, and somehow all these years later I see with my very own eyes HIS promises coming true. It is as though I'm experiencing Spring for the first time in a very long time.
And like the songbirds that wake us on a beautiful Spring morning, I just want to sing out ...

"Then sings my soul,  My Savior God to thee How Great thou art. How Great thou art." If today you find yourself still in the season of winter in your soul and it has been a long hard winter, with no sun in sight, please remember that HE who causes the Sun to rise and the Moon to glow(or reflect the suns light for you scientific types out there)  HE IS FAITHFUL!! "The soul should always stand ajar,  ready to welcome the ecstatic experience." Emily Dickinson
I hope your soul is ajar ready and waiting for the Spring to enter in. The turning of the corner to the road that was never ending will turn. The light at the end of the tunnel is there, it might seem dim but it's there.  The ever approaching season of a Spring like no other that  your heart and soul has ever known will come.   It is because of the Lord's mercy and loving-kindness that we are not consumed, because His [tender] compassions fail not. They are new every morning; great and abundant is Your stability and faithfulness.Lamentations 3: 22-23
Wait for it. Hope for it. Believe in it.