Four years ago, spring had blossomed and Easter had been celebrated and then winter came.
That most beautiful time of seasons, little did I know, it was the end of beauty for a while, the ushering of a new beautiful season that would not be.
Spring was cut short in my life, the bitterest of my coldest seasons yet came instead, and I think I’ve always been a bit cynical of spring since.
By the time spring comes, I’m beyond thirsty for it, beyond in need of it, and its resurrection is a balm to my spirit that reaches deep. Four years ago, I needed spring in life in more ways than just a climate change. I needed it in my life, and I thought it might be coming. But after weeks on a rollercoaster of is-this-spring-or-is-this-winter, winter was confirmed in a harsher way than I had worried.
I find myself now, in this spring years later, living in a new part of the country where winter comes in spring. We thought spring came, I needed it to, felt the seasonal sadness deep and longed for the refreshing waves of warmth and sights of flowers. It started, and then more snow came. Easter came, and it snowed, the day after Easter came, and inches of more snow.
I guess I felt that touch a wound in me so deep I almost couldn’t place it.
What do you do when it should be spring, when the time is right for it, when it teases you and touches you, and then it flips to ice and snow and chills in wind instead?
That’s what life felt like four years ago, like everything of spring was a trick and it was really winter in disguise. And I’ve never been able to trust spring seasons since.
I look at my life now, and it seems like maybe spring is coming, like maybe it’s even here. Could we be in a reprieve of winter? It seems like it’s been winter for so, so long, and so recently that the sting of cold is still fresh on my heart. I know around me now I can see blooming, can see beauty opening, can see the Creator making a way for new growth.
And I’ve been marked by fear so deeply I can hardly breathe at times.
And it’s this juxtaposition, this warmth and loveliness all around me and my flinching that makes my heart ache more.
I hear my heart want to feel the joy, but it keeps hesitating and asking, is it spring?
I’m so afraid of the next snap of winter, I’m missing the sun on my face.
I’m so afraid of the next snap of winter, I’m missing the sun on my face.
How do I reconcile the acknowledgment of spring right in front of my face and the recognition of how fleeting it can very well be?
A few weeks ago as the weather improved, I washed all the kids’ winter wear and declared winter “over”. When it snowed last week, I kept the snow clothes put away, and while I let them go out in coats, I let them know there would be no cocoa this time upon coming in. I couldn’t do it anymore, couldn’t do winter, even if winter hadn’t run out of energy. I certainly had.
And that’s how winter seasons in life are, we want to put them away and claim them over, but our limited ability leaves us done before winters are.
And so we have to look to a limitless God of spring to get us through.
It’s this tension, this holding of spring when given us, but loosely as we know how quickly the snow can come.
I don’t want to ignore the spring, don’t want to miss the blessings, and it’s been my steady prayer lately: Lord, help me to feel Your blessings.
And yet refusing to find my hope there, needing a hope that can outlast the faded flowers when cold wilts them again.
The reality is, even in spring, on this cursed earth in one way it’s always winter. We’ve yet to really experience spring. And in another way, the reality is that it’s never winter, because the God of spring is always shining the Son and always making audacious beauty that can’t be stopped by any snow seasons.
Spring is coming.
And spring is always here.
And so we ache in winter with a solid hope of spring to come.
And we receive winter knowing spring is even already hidden here.
Today I’ll remember the baby that the God of spring spared from all winter. The little one who came and left so briefly, leaving us reeling in a winter in spring, yet holding to the ultimate spring harder than we ever had before.
I can’t wait to see the blossoms to come.