REST Day 29: Another Step Towards Easter
Have you noticed how lush and thick spring is this year? I have seen some springs that have been hard, almost stingy and withholding in their thin buddings after a hard winter, but this one seems so lavish and flamboyant it's almost indecent.
I walked out to my car today, and the air was thick with the perfume of growing things.
I laughed at the piles of pollen and tree flowers sprinkled all over the kids' trampoline in our backyard today. It covered us all when we bounced.
I went to look at the neighbors' pine trees because I have a love for pinecones in their wooden, spikey rose-likeness, and was a little taken aback at the suggestive, tubular nubs sprouting where cone flowers will bloom later. I've never noticed that before!
Spring can be so funny, so determinedly unpuritanical, sexy and lavish with newness and growth. It's crazy that after a mean, harshly cold season, one of such unbridled joy could emerge.
How is that possible...?
I wrote two days ago about the feeling of desert this Lent, the feeling of being scraped away from things and people and made to more fully rely on God.
Those feelings are still there, the tiredness, the questioning, are still there, and yet, as I remembered today, spring comes. Easter still comes.
I've received several sweet reminders to remember; remember God's goodness, His always faithfulness, and live there.
In the midst of desert there is the perfume of growing things. Where appearances are barren or ugly or wasted, new roots are forming. In old, dead places there is new growth budding. If I forget these truths, then I forget the significance of the time spent in the desert.
I don't mean to be dramatic--I sound as though I've been through some harrowing, life-threatening experience in the desert. I have not. Only the things of motherhood and wifehood and family life. And yet, Lent or not, difficult seasons come and go, and they are always a part of the renewal process--the learning, the growth, the scraping away and leaving of less important things for better ones.
I write this because after I wrote my last blog I was kind of hoping my fog and tiredness would magically clear up and I'd find my writing groove easily again, the kids would fall back into the rhythm I knew, and things would, you know, just kind of all be better.
Um, well, they haven't exactly. Apparently we are in a season of change, and that's just the way it is. But I wanted to take time to remember, to remind myself, and you, that spring comes after a desert. The growth after a dearth. The Resurrection after a death.
So if now still feels a little desert-ish to you, like it does me, remember: we are still walking towards Easter, towards spring. I think there is still resurrection to be had for each of us.
JOURNAL PROMPT:
Have you "noticed" spring yet this year? What have you noticed particularly? What does it mean for you to "walk towards Easter, towards spring" in this season of your life?
I walked out to my car today, and the air was thick with the perfume of growing things.
I laughed at the piles of pollen and tree flowers sprinkled all over the kids' trampoline in our backyard today. It covered us all when we bounced.
I went to look at the neighbors' pine trees because I have a love for pinecones in their wooden, spikey rose-likeness, and was a little taken aback at the suggestive, tubular nubs sprouting where cone flowers will bloom later. I've never noticed that before!
Spring can be so funny, so determinedly unpuritanical, sexy and lavish with newness and growth. It's crazy that after a mean, harshly cold season, one of such unbridled joy could emerge.
How is that possible...?
I wrote two days ago about the feeling of desert this Lent, the feeling of being scraped away from things and people and made to more fully rely on God.
Those feelings are still there, the tiredness, the questioning, are still there, and yet, as I remembered today, spring comes. Easter still comes.
I've received several sweet reminders to remember; remember God's goodness, His always faithfulness, and live there.
In the midst of desert there is the perfume of growing things. Where appearances are barren or ugly or wasted, new roots are forming. In old, dead places there is new growth budding. If I forget these truths, then I forget the significance of the time spent in the desert.
I don't mean to be dramatic--I sound as though I've been through some harrowing, life-threatening experience in the desert. I have not. Only the things of motherhood and wifehood and family life. And yet, Lent or not, difficult seasons come and go, and they are always a part of the renewal process--the learning, the growth, the scraping away and leaving of less important things for better ones.
I write this because after I wrote my last blog I was kind of hoping my fog and tiredness would magically clear up and I'd find my writing groove easily again, the kids would fall back into the rhythm I knew, and things would, you know, just kind of all be better.
Um, well, they haven't exactly. Apparently we are in a season of change, and that's just the way it is. But I wanted to take time to remember, to remind myself, and you, that spring comes after a desert. The growth after a dearth. The Resurrection after a death.
So if now still feels a little desert-ish to you, like it does me, remember: we are still walking towards Easter, towards spring. I think there is still resurrection to be had for each of us.
JOURNAL PROMPT:
Have you "noticed" spring yet this year? What have you noticed particularly? What does it mean for you to "walk towards Easter, towards spring" in this season of your life?
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