#3 - Why Did No One Tell Me About Spring?

Logic, reason, and feelings can mislead us to despair.

I haven’t lived in a place with all four seasons since I was 5, so this first year in Tennessee makes me feel like a kid again. I thought fall was universally understood as the best season, and last year I tried to relish every minute of living in a place that actually has fall. And indeed. It was lovely.

But—and I hope you read this with an angry tone, because I’m a bit angry—why did no one tell me about spring? It’s not even officially here yet, but it’s boggling my mind!

I’ve been staring down the trees and plants in my yard all winter, examining their brown and grey branches and wondering…how the heck they will ever not be dead? Like, really. I was never good at science class. I don’t understand how it happens. I honestly feel like an alien from another planet.

The Real Story

These plants look 100% hopelessly gone. Brown, indistinguishable leaves. Limp, fragile twigs. It makes absolutely no sense for anything to come through those branches and shoot forth green stuff. Even as I write, I feel like I’m being gullible for believing that the dead stuff will be alive again. I’ve never seen it happen before.

It appears that according to all logic and reason, the story is over. Also, according to my feelings, the story is over. For this tree, that tree, that tree, that one…all their stories. It’s the end. The story is over. They died.
That’s absolutely how it looks, feels, smells, seems. The end.

Ah! Maybe the dead trees can be chopped down and new trees can take their place. That’s a good story, right?

But that’s not what’s actually going to happen, for most of them. The real story is so much better. Shocking, unbelievable, and breathtakingly beautiful.

New life in spring isn’t the same kind of “new” as starting from scratch, but it’s new life coming out of something that has been around for decades. Something that looked dead, like, yesterday.

Dare to Believe Your Story Isn’t Over

I really need to believe this. I need to be surrounded by this. I’m a bit of a serial quitter; if I can’t see and feel the value in something right away, I tend to give up on it. I’m my own worst coroner.

But seasons make me wait. Seasons make me persevere through the dead and gray and reward me with blossoms and beauty. Maybe I can do that with the hard stuff in my life that I want to emotionally give up on?

As Chris Slaten so wisely sings, “No story is over.”

Would you dare to believe with me that there are parts of your story that aren’t over? Will you risk being gullible enough to hope that maybe that broken relationship can be restored? Or that your kid who doesn’t want anything to do with you will come home? Or that you can get out of this cycle of addiction that you’re in?

Look at creation. We’re surrounded by hope of new life. It comes back every year, whether we feel like it will or not.

I hope that was encouraging, in whatever deadness and despair you find yourself.

Love,
Hope

P.S. Here are some pictures of late winter here in Chattanooga. It’s not officially spring yet (and it’s even supposed to snow tomorrow.) But so far, I am in awe of everything spring has to offer. By the way, Jesus chose an interesting time of year to die and rise again, huh? Lots to ponder, too, about the heart of the God who designed the world in this way.