We're getting into the middle of March, and spring is officially right around the corner. My yard is currently a combination of dead winter grass, mud from the rains, bare limbed trees begging to be pruned...but also there is new green grass peeking through, buds on the bare trees, and the early-bird specials are blooming. I have daffodils, hyacinth and forsythia greeting me in the midst of my neglected winter yard.
I'm ready for more sunshine and warmer weather. I'm ready to put on the gloves and start cleaning out the stuff that needs to be cleaned out. I'm ready for the plants that are peeking up out of the ground to have room to burst forth and grow.
Spring is a wonderful time...the earth starts to bounce back from the dead of winter and is full of life again. My dear friend Vicki and I have been listening to the birds chattering and singing outside our office windows and door this week. Even though I haven't made the time yet to put cleanup effort into my yard, the signs of new life can't be stopped.
A favorite passage of mine is "See! The winter is past; the rains are over and gone. Flowers appear on the earth; the season of singing has come." Song of Solomon 2: 11-12. I often wondered if this verse would still have meaning for me, at one time in my life, 25 years ago, it was a special verse, shared between my ex-husband and me. It had very personal meaning for the two of us, and many things that were personal and meaningful to us as a couple, I have found too painful to embrace in my singleness.
But the amazing thing I am reminded of is that the Scriptures are holy. They are God's words. Not mine, not my former husband's. This passage is still one of my favorites, but my reasons have changed. God's words and promises have not.
I wondered if my season of winter would ever end. And I am speaking of the winter in my heart, and in my soul. God has done some amazing winter cleanup throughout my entire life, but over the last 3 years, there has been more clean up than ever. I am coming up out of the mud, struggling to bloom..but with God's healing, I shall. A part of me has felt "dead" for a long time. Sometimes we feel dead to avoid pain, or sometimes the deadness is a numbing that happens as a result of too much pain. Whatever it was for me, (and I'm sure it was both at different times)...the deadness is changing and being replaced with new life. I know I'm not completely over the grief of a broken family after 23 years, but I feel the restoration. I see signs of spring in my soul. God has been replacing old thoughts with new ones, old emotions with new and healed emotions, a dead heart with a heart full of life, a broken soul with a soul that wants to continually seek Him.
I am reading a book called Desire: The Journey We Must Take to Find the Life God Offers by John Eldredge. There is a chapter entitled "The Great Restoration" in which the author talks about spring returning to our souls. I love the poem he quotes:
Grief melts away
Like snow in May
As if there were no such cold thing.
Who would've thought my shrivel'd heart
Could have recover'd greennesse? It was gone
quite underground.
And now in age I bud again,
After so many deaths I live and write;
I once more smell the dew and rain,
And relish versing: O my only light
It cannot be
that I am he
On whom they tempests fell all night.
('The Flower' George Herbert)
Eldredge questions the reader "Can it really happen? Can our lives be green again?" He also goes on to point out that we have practically accepted the winter of our life for what is is, striving to find life wherever we can. That is very true of me in my divorce recovery. I have intentionally recognized that I have to accept this season in my life, embrace it, honor it, grieve it, but still move forward looking for life where I can. However, in my intentional journey of healing, one thing I overlooked is that spring always comes. Oh, I know this in the back of my mind. I know this in my heart. I know that God is always at work. But I still am surprised when I see the first daffodil poking through the muddy wintry ground. I still love driving home each day and finding something new and colorful that has emerged. And I love waking up in the mornings and finding that I am joyful and smiling and healing more than I am hurting now; and peaceful in the knowledge that when I do hurt (and yes, life will always have hurts for us all) that God is already there...comforting, soothing, healing and restoring.
