You appreciate the little flowers after the winter

Song of Songs 2:10-16 My lover speaks and says to me, “Arise my friend, my beautiful one and come! For see, the winter is past, the rains are over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth, the time of pruning the vines has come, and the song of the turtledove is heard in our land….arise, my friend, my beautiful one, and come!...Let me see your face, let me hear your voice, for your voice is sweet, and your face is lovely. My lover belongs to me and I to him.

Yesterday, after playing outside in the sunshine, my 8 year old came to me with her hands cupped together, concealing a surprise of some sort. With wide eyes she said to me, “Guess what, Mom!”

“What?” I replied, trying, but likely failing to match her wonder and excitement.

“The first flowers!”

Opening her hands, she revealed the tiniest lavender and white flowers that she had found in the front walkway.

In addition to being the sweetest little moment, her gift spoke loudly of an important lesson.

“He gives them the seasons, each different and yet every year the same, so that spring is always felt as a novelty yet always as the recurrence of an immemorial theme. He gives them in his church a spiritual year; they change from fast to feast, but it is the same feast as before.” The Screwtape Letters

The seasons change, one to the next, but always in a predictable and certain way. We know that spring comes after winter. It’s never going to not come. I do believe we miss some great opportunities to appreciate the good of winter and that we tend to believe that the darkness is some sort of punishment or something we need to hunker down and endure. However, even in our most difficult “winters”, we understand that spring follows every year without fail.

In terms of the metaphor, however, we tend to want to skip over the “winters” in our lives. We have lived enough life to know that we are going to have troubles. There are going to be sufferings. The beginning of the book of James says “Whenever you face trials of many kinds…” not “if you face any troubles.” It’s not an IF, but a when. That said, when it comes to our trials, we often try to “get through them” as quickly as possible. We have lost the ability to suffer well, or to go through our struggles to get to the other side.

The same is true with hard work. I talk to so many people who behave as if failure is the opposite of success rather than the truth that success is on the other side of failure.

Regularly, when I’m making bread, someone will ask me for my recipe. I’m always happy to share, though oftentimes a quick google search is how I got the recipe and is available for all. When I respond to the questions, after sharing the recipe, I almost always follow up with, “Although, making bread is more about technique than recipe.”

That’s a frustrating tidbit to receive when you’re trying to learn how to make bread. After all, how can you know what it’s supposed to feel like when you’ve never done it before? When you’re on your first or second batch of bread ever, how do you know how much kneading is enough and what a sticky versus elastic dough feels like? And what in the world is a windowpane test? I get it. It’s frustrating.

In order to make good bread, you have to be willing to make it badly at first. You have to be willing to get your hands literally in there and messy, and take some mental notes of how it feels, what it looks like, and how it turns out. You have to have loaves that don’t rise, and loaves that overflow and then fall. You have to knead it until you think it’s enough only to realize after baking that it wasn’t. You have to be bad at it until you’re good at it.

You can google a recipe and watch videos and even work with a mentor (those last two are extremely helpful and could even shorten your learning time), but you just can’t google experience. It has to be your hands in the dough.

But here’s the thing: even bad bread is still bread. Even hard bread can be made into bread pudding or breakfast casserole. The hardest loaf imaginable can be made into croutons, or bird food.

And once you’ve gone through loaf after loaf (more than one, hopefully fewer than a hundred) of not quite right, when you get that perfect rise and that perfect oven spring and that perfect internal, chewy texture, it’ll be as if the heavens have opened up and the birds are singing just for you. You’ll want to tell the world about your amazing loaf and also tell no one so you’ll get to enjoy every last crumb.

That first slice from that first amazing loaf will be the best thing you’ve ever eaten. Partially because there’s little tastier than homemade bread, but mostly because you worked for it. You persisted through the struggle. You learned from your experiences and less than perfect loaves and applied that knowledge to get this masterpiece.

You know it’s good because you saw every less-than-amazing loaf. You felt the dough change from not quite to just right. You know what is going to have a good oven spring and how deep to cut the slashes to have just the right amount of rise during cooking. You know, not because someone gave you the perfect recipe or you watched someone else. You know because you got to know the feeling of the whole process. Your confidence is unwavering because you have the lived experience of it. You don’t need someone’s blog post to tell you it’s good. You just know now.

And you have the satisfaction of having worked at it. You went through the disappointment and the failures (even though bread failures are still delicious), so the masterpiece tastes even better. Others will enjoy it, and you will love seeing them, but there won’t be another person in the world for whom it tastes as good because they didn’t work for it.

You appreciate the nuance between two loaves because you’ve had your hands in the struggle.

This is a life lesson if I’ve ever heard one. You appreciate the small lights when you’ve been through the darkness.

Apparently I now have a thing for Italian expressions. So many women I meet feel like they’re stuck in what they call a “late winter or early spring”. They feel on the cusp of change, but often feel like they can’t get over the hump.

Primavera is an Italian word for the season of the year between winter and summer when plants begin to flower or grow leaves. It’s the time of year when the sunshine feels warm, but the breeze still bites a bit. It’s a time when rain can turn to snow at any point, and you could still have a frost, but you might have little buds on the trees and the leaves of the tulips have pushed up through the cold ground. There could even be a crocus blooming.

Another definition for Primavera is the best part (of a person's life, usually early middle age). What if we could look at our transitions with that excitement and anticipation? If you could feel the sunshine and not fret the wind?

In terms of our growth and progress, when we can look at what we’re going through with peace in our hearts and a clear head, we would see that the lingering cold allows us to get excited about what’s coming without being expected to “do it all” from day one. We can get excited about planting seeds, but not have missed our chance if we don't’ get it all done right away. We can open the windows in the afternoon to air out our home and feel refreshed, and still close up and snuggle under a blanket when the chill is too much. We can do a little bit of work outside or on spring cleaning and dream of a world in which we really actually do it this year….without having to actually do it just yet.

The value of spring is that it’s slow and small. That can feel frustrating when we’re ready to shake off the cold and move, I get it, but when you remember that every season is intentional and has a purpose, both literally in nature and metaphorically in our hearts, you look at things a little differently. God’s love and plan are perfect. This slow transition is not a punishment. Neither was the darkness of winter or the heat of summer. All of those were intentional to serve a purpose.

So what's’ the value of Spring? What’s the value of a slow roll-out when all you want is to get moving? Well, much like training for a marathon, you don’t just jump up the day after deciding to do it and run a million miles. You work up to it. You train. You push and then you rest and recover. Same with Spring. From a metaphoric perspective, the longing you feel is good. It’s cliche but true, when you work hard for something and have to wait for it, you appreciate it more. When you get it right away and didn’t have to sacrifice for it, the excitement wanes quickly.

From a spiritual sense, that detachment from immediate gratification improves your discipline and your ability to move in God’s rhythm as nothing he does is rushed, and our desired timeline has little to no impact on his. God’s delays are not God’s denials.

Corrie ten Boom says “Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God.”

When you find yourself questioning God’s timing or feeling frustrated with what feels like slow progress, you need to ask yourself, Do I trust God? Do I believe he has a perfect plan? If the answer is yes, then shift your focus away from what you want and begin asking, God, where do you want me to focus? What’s important for me to put my attention on in this season?

This is orienting yourself toward the will of God. It’s so tempting to look at our options, talents, schedule, friends and evaluate them individually. Is this decision or opportunity good or bad? Or even, which of my options is best? Unfortunately, that’s like going to God, telling him your problem and your plan for addressing it, then walking away to handle it on your own and then maybe reporting back how it went.

What if, instead, you went to God and invited him to lead the process? Here I am, Lord. I come to do your will. Where do you want me to focus? Which options do you want in my day?

Often when I give talks about orienting yourself toward the will of God, I inevitably get asked either what it sounds like when God answers or how I know it’s him. Those are both excellent questions, and I assure you there have not yet ever been audible voices coming through the clouds or any neon signs dropping down from the clouds. So how do I know it’s God?

John 10:14, 27 I am the good shepherd, and I know mine and mine know me. My sheep hear my voice; I know them and they follow me.

In my house, when I’m up before the children reading or making coffee, I can hear the first footsteps of a little one coming down the stairs. Before I see them, I can tell by the sound and cadence of the steps which child is going to appear around the corner. I don't have to see his face to know who it is.

On the phone, sometimes it’s a little challenging to know which child I’m talking to. A few of them sound alike. I can usually tell, but every once in a while I have to listen to what they say or how they ask a question to know who I’m talking to. I know who it is because I know them. I know each of my children individually and can say with certainty who it is.

It’s the same with God. The closer I get to Him, the easier it is to recognize the voice of my shepherd. The more I talk to him and seek his guidance, the easier it is to know if a prompting is in line with what I know to be true of him.

But what if you’re new to this? How do you know then? We have the gift of Sacred Scripture to teach us about the nature of God, so that when something comes to mind that isn’t from him, it stands out. We also have the blessing of wise counsel. You know what kind of person is going to just tell you what you want to hear, or whose life is a mess and is just going to give you bad advice. You know that’s not a good person from whom to seek wise counsel.

The biggest thing I’ve had to learn (am still learning) about orienting myself to the will of God is patience. He is concerned with our wants and the minutiae of our lives. He cares for our concerns and wants to give us good things. Matthew 7: 9 Which one of you would hand his son a stone when he asks for a loaf of bread? God loves you and knows every hair on your head, but he is not going to give you something that takes you away from His will for your life. He isn’t going to give you what you want now if it gets in the way of what he wants most for you. God is concerned with the eternal and the prosperity of Heaven, not just the temporal and the comforts of our human condition. He will always make a way for us to cooperate with His will, but he will not open doors for us to fall flat on our faces following our own desires.

So if you are in a season where you’re feeling impatient, held back, like you can’t make progress, or even hopeless that things will ever change, what do you do?

Gratitude. Intentional habits. Be picky about your inner circle and what you listen to.

I know! I know! Don’t roll your eyes. I don't’ want you to stand outside in a rainstorm and shout “The sun is shining!” I don’t want you to pretend there aren’t any weeds in the garden.

No. That’s not what will help and not what I think you should do.

What I want you to do is look for little things. Look for what’s better now than it was last winter. The fact that you are ready to go and feel held back means that you are thinking forward. You are setting goals or interested in growth. That’s ahead of where you were last year when you just hunkered down in the darkness and couldn’t even care. Last year, you didn’t really believe there’d be sunshine again and you weren’t itching to get started. This year, your impatience is progress. I want you to count that as a win.

I want you to allow yourself to feel a moment of happiness when you look at your water bottle or your dog. I want you to notice those first little flowers and count them as proof that the sun is going to shine and spring is coming. I want you to think back on a time when you really were grateful for something. Call that moment to mind and feel it with your body. If it was a time at the beginning of a relationship, recall the butterflies you used to feel. I remember the first time my now husband and I kissed. I remember where we were standing, the smell of his black leather jacket and the length of his hair under his backwards ball cap. When I think back, I can still feel the butterflies I felt then and my heart will even quicken. That’s a moment of gratitude. I can pull up a memory of snuggling with my dog, Miles, on my couch when I was sick. He was the best at cuddling when you were sick or sad. He’s been gone for several years, but I can still see his floppy ears and his sweet eyes locking with mine. I can remember getting my second son up after his nap when he was a pudgy 18 month old. His giant grin and giggles when I kissed his neck stay with me and I remember the rush of gratitude I had for that moment every day.

Do those memories erase the struggles of today? Of course not. But you tell me, which person is more likely to come up with solutions to her problems? The person curled up in the fetal position who has lost hope that life will ever get better? Or the person who is filled with butterflies and lovely memories of things that brought her happiness?

Here’s the catch: When you practice even little moments of gratitude, you are priming the pump of your heart. You are creating a chain reaction. When you cultivate the habit of feeling grateful for the little things around you and remembering moments past that brought you joy, you see more and more around you. Seeing the grass start to green up leads you to see the buds on the trees. That leads you to see more birds returning from southern migration (and did you know that listening to birds relieves stress? Your primal brain understands that small birds only chirp and flit about when they are calm and safe. If there’s danger nearby, they will flee or grow silent. So if you hear them, your brain knows it’s safe and you can relax). Suddenly you find yourself noticing and being grateful for things without even trying.

The reverse is true too. Have you ever heard of someone “spiraling”? One negative thought leads to the next and the next and the next. An unexpected bill leads to thoughts of accounts over drafting, utilities being shut off, and suddenly you’re convinced you’re going to be homeless and your children starving. We can go from one negative thing to a whole negative world in an instant. Most people only spiral down. It takes some effort and practice to spiral up, but it works exactly the same way.

Today, wherever you are, look for little things. If you don’t see any, then look for “medium things” and work your way down to small things. Be grateful for a working phone charger or a break in the rain right at the moment it’s time for you to run in from the parking lot.

If you have gone through the darkness, you are more able to see the little pinpricks of light. When you have gone through the long-suffering, you can better appreciate the relief of struggle. Be encouraged that God is in the little things. He moves in the whispers.

1 Kings 19:11-12 Then the Lord said: Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord; the Lord will pass by. There was a strong and violent wind rending the mountains and crushing rocks before the Lord - but the Lord was not in the wind; after the wind, an earthquake - but the Lord was not in the earthquake; after the earthquake fire - but the Lord was not in the fire; after the fire, a light sound.

The Lord isn’t in the rush and noise of your life. The Lord is in the stillness.

Psalm 46:11 Be still and know that I am God!