Snow is ugly.
Well … end of winter snow is ugly. End of winter snow is dirty-black and slushy and old and lingering.
The first snow of the year always bathes the world in white.
The last snow of the year turns the world gray.
I was in sixth grade when I first started to take notice of spring, when I first started noticing the return of the robins, poking their beaks through the dead snow, looking for something buried in the thawing earth.
I started to notice the trees, the buds bursting on the branches, ready to sprout green, baby leaves.
The air grew warmer. There were still bursts here and there of a chilled wind—winter still trying to hang on, clawing at the edges. But some days, I went without a coat … and didn’t tell my parents.
It was the first time I truly appreciated the spring. It was the first time I felt a sense of relief that winter was on its way out.
I miss the change of seasons of Florida. I miss the contrast of winter and spring. I think spring does come to Florida, but it does so while we are sleeping. Sometime in March we go to bed and outside everything is brown and chilled and while we sleep, spring comes; the branches shed their dead leaves in one final shudder and in the morning everything is green again and warm. It is winter to summer in an eight hour swing.
We need contrast in our lives. We need both the stale, slumbering days of winter and exciting days of new life in spring to appreciate the significance of both.
Terry Esau writes in his book Surprise Me that God is a painter who works with contrast. “Midnight blue is his favorite color … then, all of a sudden … he splashes some bright reds and yellows in just the right places, and suddenly, we understand. If he had started with the reds and yellows, would we have understood? The night explains the day … the dark illumines the light.”
Without a doubt, for the first decade of the 21st century, I led a very boring, stagnant life. Every day was the same. Nothing ever changed. Days were something to be counted and not something to look forward to. Though I had nothing to complain about, I was leading as Thoreau writes, “a life of quiet desperation.”
On January 1, I sat in the parking lot at Barnes and Noble thinking about the last ten years and finally begging God to do something in my life. I told Him I could not live the next ten years the same way I had lived the last.
But as Pastor Debbie continues to point out to me, there are no such things as wasted years. God has a plan and sometimes He has us in a holding pattern while He gets things ready for the next part of our journey.
Within three months of asking God to change my life, I found Hope.
The blessing of those ten boring, holding pattern years is that thanks to them, I have contrast; I have something to compare with the wonderful things that are happening in my life now.
Where my life used to be routine, where nothing surprising ever happened, God manages to surprise me now virtually every day with something new.
Spring has come into my life.
And it wouldn’t have been nearly as meaningful had it not been preceded by winter.
