Nothing Can Steal My Joy…Except Maybe Winter!

Ok so not really, it shouldn’t anyway; but I can’t tell you how much happier I am with the sun shining and the sweet smell of spring in the air!

It’s funny how that first snowfall is so beautiful, with those puffy white flakes falling softly to the ground. They make you feel happy and nostalgic waiting for Christmas, presents, lights and snowball fights. But… that LAST snowfall, is like a torturous white hell! You want to cry and throw things at your window. Instead of happy feelings you are left feeling rather angry at the world and your lack of Vitamin D is severely affecting your behavior. You may be going insane!

This is probably a little dramatic, but you can’t tell me that all of you upstate New Yorker’s haven’t felt the same!

But today as the sun is shining and it’s warm enough to sit on my porch swing to drink my morning coffee, I am a much happier, nicer person! This isn’t necessarily good though…. should I really be letting my surroundings affect the way I feel? Should I be so easily transformed into a monster just because I’m cold and tired of being stuck inside all day? No I really shouldn’t, but unfortunately, this year I definitely was!

Now, I know there are some honest deficiencies that cause some very real problems. (My husband was so severely vitamin D deficient this year that he was in constant pain! Thankfully we finally got that all figured out, but it was not a fun time!) So maybe we all just needed a strong dose of vitamin D to raise our spirits! But I think often what we really need, is to shift our thoughts and focus off of the negative and on to the beauty that surrounds us.

That last snowfall… it really was beautiful, but I refused to see it that way! The time that I spent snuggled up on the couch with my three-year old, was a precious and treasured time. She goes to pre-K this year and that relationship will be forever changed; those hours of holding her in my arms will never really be the same. So did I treasure that time the way that I should have?  And what about that late winter snow storm? The sledding, fort building and snowball fights were such a thrill to my children, and I wouldn’t take that away from them for all the early springs in the world! So was it really so bad?

As happy as I am that spring is here, I don’t want to be like that man who is so easily blown and tossed by the wind. I can honestly tell you I had begun to feel as if I were like the walking dead. I wasn’t even depressed, I was just an emotional vagabond you might say; walking  around aimlessly, feeling as if my emotions had no real home. I think that fight is real no matter who you are, but when you are a stay at home mom it is especially trying. When you have no real connection with the outside world, when your kids get sick and you’re stuck cleaning up vomit or runny noses. When your husband works hard and although you love him for it, you feel alone most of the time. It can be very hard to not become cold, calloused and a bit mechanical in the every day.

But just like the spring has brought a fresh and beautiful scent to the world; like the trees that have begun to show life and the blossoms of daffodils and tulips that have broken through the barren ground. Just like the babbling brooks that have broken free from their icy prisons and the birds have begun to sing their beautiful songs; so too, have I begun to feel the awakening of spring in my heart. Not just because the seasons have changed in the natural, but because His joy has been shed abroad on my heart. Because I see now, that I can choose to stay in winter for the foreseeable future, or I can take hold of the life and joy that Jesus paid for. I can see my world through the eyes of Spring, through the eyes of that life-giving power as it breaks through the hard barren ground and brings a beauty that is incomparable.

You may feel as though you’ve spent years in the cold and barren winter, struggling to find any real life in the world around you; but let this Spring bring an awakening to your heart as it has mine. Let go of the sorrow, let go of the cold that you’ve let define you. Look around at the beauty that surrounds you…. Spring is here!

 The spring comes slowly down this way; but the great thing is that the corner has been turned. There is, of course, this difference, that in the natural spring the crocus cannot choose whether it will respond or not. We can. We have the power either of withstanding the spring, and sinking back into the cosmic winter, or of going on into those ‘high mid-summer pomps’ in which our Leader, the Son of man, already dwells, and to which He is calling us. It remains with us to follow or not, to die in this winter, or to go on into that spring and that summer.

The Grand Miracle – Part 2

C.S. Lewis, “The Grand Miracle” God in the Dock