I woke up this morning, & it was spring. Not sure how that happened. You'd think with all my belly-aching for months about the cold weather & gray skies that I would notice spring before it just suddenly...well...sprung upon me. Maybe there's a deeper meaning in the name of this season.
I can always tell when spring is here because the road behind our house disappears. On our little street, we're the house closest to the road, & during the winter months, when the tree limbs are bare of leaf and bird and bud, the road is quite visible.
It doesn't bother me too much, except when headlights are too bright.
But when spring is here, the road vanishes, & if I only look out my back door, I can make believe there's no one else for miles, that I'm tucked away safely in my cocoon, and that no one can touch me.
A lifelong introvert, I enjoy this feeling of safety, of anonymity, of being invisible. It's how I felt for so many years, even among friends & family: invisible. I tried to be an extrovert. Honest. But opening yourself up to people leaves room for getting hurt. Relationships aren't my safe cocoon. They're messy, unorganized, and spontaneous. Get hurt often enough, and it gets old quick. You know that, don't you? We've all been there: the crossroads of do I protect myself, or do I reach out?
How much rejection can one heart take?
How many tears can one set of eyes shed?
We set up a front of armor: indifference. You think that hurt me? Ha! My skin's thicker than that. But inside, we hurt, we bleed, we cry. The human spirit is fragile, a bud trying desperately to burst into bloom while all around it the frigid winds of winter's last gusts blow.
That happens to me every spring. I think it's warm for good, I plant flowers outside, and then one more frost sets in and kills everything. So it is with people; so it is with relationships. A person is fragile, a bud tentatively testing the surrounding atmosphere, testing if it's safe to come out, to make relationships, to burst into bloom.
There are gusts of frozen wind, icy blasts of cold shoulders, hurtful words, withheld love, ignored olive branches. A flower can only withstand so much before withering & dying.
Budding relationships need the warm sunlight of love to encourage them, help them grow, give them courage to spread their arms wide in the full bloom of loving and being loved in return. Yes, it's safer to wrap ourselves in our cocoon, to shut ourselves off from the world, to never allow ourselves to be hurt. But look at all that is missed: friendships, laughter, sorrow, growth.
That's what it all comes back to: growing. Not remaining stagnant in our faith but growing. Do you remember growing pains? Most of middle school seemed to be consumed with doctor's visits for me where I was convinced I was dying, but the doctor simply told me the same thing every time: "It's just growing pains." Just as our young bodies cannot grow without some uncomfortableness & unpleasantness, so relationships can't growth without a little pain, a lot of honesty, and a willing to get one's hands dirty.
The apostle Paul said it beautifully in Ephesians 4, "... that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head—Christ— from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love" (verses 14-16).
We are meant to work together, meant to grow together. No one is an island. But we must encourage one another. No one wants to reach out knowing the result will always be one of indifference.
To quote Simon & Garfunkel: "A rock feels no pain, and an island never cries." Perhaps that's so, but a rock is also too hard to hug, and an island can be lonely & deserted. We can harden ourselves, isolate ourselves, shut ourselves off from the world, but not without consequence to ourselves. We can turn our tentative bud of a soul into a desert.
I planted a flower last spring, and though I watered it daily, by the end of the summer, it looked completely dead. A mound of red fire ants had built a mountain practically on top of it, and it just looked like a dead stick poking out of my lawn. Chalking another casualty up to my black thumb of death, I went on with my day.
Just today, I walked outside and saw a tiny bloom opening where the dead plant had been. I'm not at all sure if there is some perfectly reasonable gardening explanation for this, or if this is a little miracle flower God sent my way today. But whatever the reason, it serves a wonderful reminder: even through the coldest winter (and this last was one of our coldest on record), even when all appearance of life is gone, a bud can be hiding beneath the surface, ready to pop into sight, burst into bloom. All hope can seem lost, all resources seemingly exhausted, but God can make a bud bloom anywhere.
It's not too late.
Don't be afraid.
Don't wrap up in your safe cocoon of isolation and fear. Your desert of loneliness.
Take a leap. Unfurl those petals, even in the coldest wind.
Bloom. Prosper. Grow.
