Spring is Coming

I am one of those people who is perpetually cold. And I don't like it. I don't like being cold.

My husband teases me for how I wear socks all summer long and sleep with a blanket even when it’s over 100° outside. Anything under 80° definitely requires a jacket, and if there is a breeze, then over 80°, too. And if my feet are cold, forget about it. There’s nothing I can do that’ll make the rest of me warm.

Maybe it’s for this reason that winter is my least favorite season. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love Christmastime. But the cold I could do without. 

Of course, I live in Arizona, where it doesn’t ever get that cold. Not like Chicago or the East Coast. But it’s cold enough in the winter I bundle up and wait for it to be over.

My favorite season surprisingly enough is the spring. One would think summer would be my favorite since I enjoy the heat but no, it’s the spring I love. I love the flowers and the rain, the new life growing again. I love the hope that bubbles up at the beginning of a new year, when everything looks promising and who knows what the year might bring.

See, that’s the other reason why I don’t like winter. Because things die. Or at least, they appear dead. What once was green turns yellow and brown. Trees lose their leaves. Flowers no longer bloom. Everything looks withered and bare as they huddle down to make it through the colder months.

Every winter without fail, I watch the trees and plants in our yard go through this cycle and I wonder… this year, will they come back?  Or are they really truly dead? Yet amazingly enough, every spring, they do come back.

They weren't dead; merely dormant. They were waiting. Waiting for spring.

I wonder if the stages of our life aren’t like that, too. Don’t we all have some seasons where parts of us, or maybe, in extreme cases, it feels like all of us, wither up and huddle down? Where it feels like maybe they’ve even died?

I’ve heard people say, for example after a loss, 'when they died it felt like I died, too'. And that feeling doesn’t only extend to losing a loved one, but sometimes also to losing a dream or a job or harboring a regret. Sometimes also after going through a trauma, it feels as though you will never be the same again, and part of you died.

What if, though, sometimes, those parts of us aren’t dead but merely dormant for the winter?

What if they’re sleeping, waiting for the spring to come? 

Our faith may also go through winters. Something happens which causes us to lose faith in God or in the Church or in Christianity. And our faith withers up. We may think we’ve lost it completely.

But then... something changes. The sun shines through and it begins to feel warmer. A few green leaves appear on a branch that was barren. A bud, indicating a new flower is almost here. We see the signs - spring is coming.

If you've read much of my blog at all, you can see clearly, I’ve been there, too. I worried my faith was gone. Dead. Destroyed.

But it was just sleeping.

Now it is waking, unfurling from its huddled position and stretching into the Son.

I love the spring. It’s full of hope and joy and the feeling that anything is possible. 

If you are in a winter season, take heart.

Spring is coming.