Longing for Spring

The kids and I just returned from a walk over to the park. While we were out, Shea and I started talking about spring and how all of these trees we see that look dead will begin to grow new, green leaves. Shea noticed some flowers growing on the ground (and, of course he picked some for me) and we started looking for other signs of spring. I started thinking all sorts of deep thoughts and tried sharing them with my sweet little son, but I knew  I had lost him when he interrupted me and said, “Mom, Gage has a machete at Granny and Papa’s!”.

So, I’ll try putting those deep thoughts here and see where my fingers take me.

I find it pretty amazing that God places spring right after a season of death. We begin longing for green, long before we see it, and when we see just a glimpse, as Shea and I did today, we are reminded that, YES, life is coming. It’s going to be pretty again! The flowers will bloom and the trees will turn green. And, once we catch that glimpse, we long even more for what will soon come.

I think about all of the pain I see around me and experience myself. Tears well up. I know it will be different. I long for it to one day be different. I wonder when I will catch a glimpse of what is to come. And, then He shows me. I see someone who has been shunned by the church, loved for the first time, with no strings attached, by Christians who care. I hear a woman, who has been all alone with a wheelchair bound son share her story. A painful story. A story I fear has been heard by no one. She shares it enthusiastically. She is thankful to have a person sitting and listening. She tells me the church has hurt her. I tell her that my prayer is that God will use my family to fix some of the hurt the church has caused so many. She tells me she never would have made it without her faith in God. She tells me she doesn’t need a building to know God. I point to my heart and say, “That’s because it’s in here.”

These glimpses make me long even more for a day when we won’t hurt each other. A day when there are no sons in wheelchairs unexpectedly. A day when men do not leave their families. A day when there are no strings attached to love.

The thing about seasons is that they don’t last forever. Just as we see winter change to spring change to summer and then to fall, we know that our pain will come to an end. The hard times come in waves and we long for the easier times. But, then, the easy times come, and we forget how cold it was back there. How much we depended on Him to push us through.

I’m thankful for the longing that is placed in all of us as we go through the physical season of winter on this earth. I have no doubt that it is God whispering in our ears that change is coming. There is more. And, it will be beautiful.

“For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.” ~Romans 1:20

PS: this post was written with only one mishap. A plate pushed off of the table and broken, by the one and only, Bryn.