But Spring, It Still Comes

It's been a rough, tough patch lately in an already barren desert of a season. My body has all but quit. So many hard situations plague the surrounding world. So many loved ones seem trapped in a slow downhill shift toward another long, dark valley.

Today, I felt the sigh of reality escape my lips as I gingerly washed some day-old strawberries that were already headed past their prime, hoping to pump some vitamin C into my sweet boy who'd just spiked a fever.

He glanced at them and a smile lit up his flushed little face. "Soon," he said, his tired but bright eyes widening with delight, "we won't have to buy them from the store anymore. We'll pick them from our garden!"

I'd forgotten how, a few weeks ago, I'd excitedly led the kids out back to show them the first, almost hidden surprises of spring. The green baubles of new buds clinging to dry skeletons of branches. The ruddy stubs of rhubarb and sharp green edges of bulbs, peeking out from the faded brown of dreary, deadened earth.

I'd almost forgotten that there would soon be small, sweet, melt-in-your mouth strawberries waiting.

But even in his moment of suffering, he had not.

I looked at his little face, sick as he was, still so easily transformed by the sweet assurance of unquestioning hope, the unwavering promise of spring.

Then I remembered the game the kids played this morning as we drove through a cold smattering of rain all the gray way to school. "How many trees with white flowers can we find before we get there?" They found fifteen. Fifteen stalwart beauties standing tall in the miserable weather.

As my brain fog lifted I remembered again. For the past few weeks, my heart has leapt at the sight of every new pink bud that has graced my view, and I rejoiced anew in wonder at the palest pink buds beginning to form on our peach tree; I didn't think it would bloom or bear fruit two years in a row.

Yet it has.

Even as my insides ache and my body wanes, even as we clamor to keep up with the insane pace of our days and weather the changes and push through the weight of it all--

Even as the dreary rain turns to heavy, wet crystals of snow, even as the weight of another storm threatens to pile on, to crush the delicate beginnings of a new season--

Spring still comes.

Spring will always come.

So tonight, I looked at my tired store-bought strawberries and lonely half of a lemon left over from my fish dinner, and I made lemonade. Strawberry honey lemonade in a cocktail glass, to be exact.

And I drank in hope. 

Nature still must bow to the fallen aspect of our world. Buds will fall victim to late frosts. Fruits will be pummeled by hail. Animals and pests will claim much of the harvest. But the rest? The rest will still make it.

Somewhere in a sleepy little bed to the right of a muddy path, our strawberry in the making is drinking in the rain and preparing for its summer debut.

Yes. Quietly, gently, but unrelentingly spring ushers forth, leaving beauty in its wake. Beauty which doggedly persists in the face of that which tries to defy it.

May my life, 

may my faith, 

as I walk through the barren expanse 

be as such.