The Longest Winter

Spring is trying to arrive. Well—I guess it’s already here. This year I totally forgot to notice the first day of spring. It has been one of the longest and coldest winters I can remember in a long time. Even in middle Tennessee, we had multiple snowfalls.

 

It was lightly falling that February day—the last 24 hours of my mother’s life—I left Nashville. At least six inches of snow was on the ground when I landed in Philadelphia. More fell in the days after my mom’s death. Then, there was rain. Then, more snow, covering the new grave.

 

This week I have been watching the daffodils open (although they typically bloom weeks earlier than this). I’ve wanted to capture the first warm, sunny days in a bottle and put them on my desk at work. I see the profusion of pink on the branches of the trees around my office.

 

But my spirit hasn’t been filled with spring. As my sister said in her blog recently, inside my heart it still feels like winter.

 

A phrase spoken by the creatures of C.S. Lewis’ Narnia keeps popping into my mind this week: “Always winter, never Christmas.” It’s this kind of winter that fills my heart.

 

I can’t put a band-aid on my heart. I can’t wrap my feelings in pretty words and make a sweet spring poem out of them. I don’t feel the happiness of the daffodils, my favorite flower—my favorite color—this year.

 

But I do know that somewhere deep in my spirit, there are seeds. Seeds I can’t see. Seeds the Father planted during this long, cold winter. Seeds that even now are filled with hidden, silent life. I don’t know what these seeds will become. But I do know that one day they will bloom.

 

And when they do, winter will finally be over.

 

 

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