Spring is Coming

91st Street Garden, NYC, June

This post is brought to you by the winter that has kicked our butts and almost killed us dead. We're so tired of the cold, we're crying. Dear Mother Nature, UNCLE.

And in my week-of-quotes, this post kinda has two in it, because the title is one. Beautiful, inspiring Steven Curtis Chapman wrote those words. (Beautiful, inspiring Ruth passed them on to me). If you don't know Steven Curtis Chapman, you need to know that his adopted daughter was killed in an accident. The CD Ruth gave me was written out of that pain and out of the hope he clings to that we can heal to a point in this life and - better still - there's eternity to come.

I knew I would love Spring is Coming the moment I saw the song list on the back cover. This is a truth I cling to every year and every time life feels like winter whether it is or not.

The first time I really felt this was the winter after my niece Claire lost her twin sister Ellery only nine hours after they'd entered the world. This was a hard reality for me. I'd never doubted that despite the trouble Felicity had with her pregnancy, everything would be fine. Because everything until then kinda always had been. This was the first time life faced me and said, "Yeah, most people figure this out sooner. But I can knock your feet right out from under you. And then kick."

I sort of embraced the sadness that came after Ellery died. I let it be. I cried when I felt like it, and I felt confused when I felt like it, and I felt stunned when I felt like it. But deep down, I kept thinking. Spring is coming. We're never going to forget Ellery. But this pain that's cold and hard like winter, it will change.

And it did. I still cry about Ellery, but I also feel so grateful for that deep down, unforgettable lesson about spring. Steven Curtis Chapman wrote the latest song that speaks to this conviction, but Nichole Nordeman wrote the first. And this is how she said it. "Even now in death, you open doors for life to enter..."

That's my favorite line. Even in death, you open doors for life to enter. So much hope in that description of winter and all the life that's waiting just below the surface, all the life that's just about to burst. The verse for spring goes on to say:

And everything that's new has bravely surfaced / Teaching us to breathe

And what was frozen through is newly purposed / Turning all things green

So it is with you / And how you make me new

With every season's change

And so it will be / As you are recreating me

Summer, autumn, winter

Spring