spring

Thoughts 3/9/10




It smells like spring it sounds like spring and I have broken out the flip flops. I am not a person who really dislikes winter. In fact, I really like winter. I don’t mind bundling up and I love the smell of the snow and making show angels. I love white Christmases and drinking hot cocoa after winter walks. But I love spring too. Rolling down the car windows and putting the heavy coat in the closet. I love opening all the doors and windows in the house and breathing in the earthy spring air while the house seems to sigh like you just took off its girdle.



I couldn’t help but think on my way to work as I contemplated how what seems like just a few moments ago I was thinking about how peaceful the world rested underneath its blanket of snow, that winter is a lot like being pregnant. The earth is waiting to give birth again. Winter can have its swollen feet and achy back moments but overall it is still wonderful. It’s a promise, just like being pregnant is a promise. All the uncomfortable stuff is so easy to tolerate because at the end you get to hold a new creation, an incarnation of love. A baby all soft and smelly.



For me, that promise feels so veiled right now. I believe that God is going to do something…I just need lots of help with my unbelief some days. I think sometimes it is harder for me that David in this regard. Though I want so much to have faith that can move mountains, I am so easily pulled into feeling like this winter has been a waste. I cling to the promise that nothing, when handed over to God, is wasted. I watch my feet get puffier, my belly get bigger and my bathroom breaks get more frequent, and I am haunted by doubt. So each day contain deliberate efforts to put my faith in what I know is the truth. As our friend Dan said Sunday, doctors know facts but they don’t know the truth. All that effort is sometimes really exhausting. I wish could take a vacation from this whole think and come back in a week, refreshed and ready to fight the good fight. But folks that’s just not the way it works.



“Lord help me put my faith in truth and not in facts because today I am tempted so to despair. Change my heart to be a heart that is near to yours, because the nearer I am too you, the more I can trust in your love. Forgive me for trusting facts more than you. I believe Lord you can, and you will do miraculous things in the life of my family.”