Spring is Slowly Coming

It has been a long winter and I am highly impatient for spring - both literally and figuratively.  Many of us are longing for spring and are weary of waiting. Here in Williamsburg it is only 50 today (that is a good winter temp for this part of the world) and not very sunny.  I know those that live in the Northeast are done with snow and ice and cold temperatures.  I have even seen Facebook stories charging the Groundhog with lying and fraud (like this one from VA Tech Police with this caption:  The Virginia Tech Police Department has been investigating formal reports of an early spring in 2013. After obtaining some helpful tips from community members, we were able to locate the reporting party in order to ask some questions. After several hours of intense interview and interrogation, we are pleased to report that we obtained a full confession!!!! :) :

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Right now this tree should be blooming like this (I took this picture last March)

Here is what this tree looks like today:

It feels this way in my life too.  I have been in a season of endings and a season of waiting.  I have been trying to figure out what's next.  I have been grieving leaving a job and a place that I loved very much even as I knew I needed to go, knew that it was time.  I have found myself longing for the grieving just to be over with, just be able to move onto the next thing.  I have been wanting to figure out the what's next.  I have some ideas, some thoughts.  Yet I find myself part way out of winter but not yet into spring.  I am at Holy Saturday - a day of waiting, a time of liminality.  To use the language of Ecclesiastes it is a time of mourning, a time of searching and a time of scattering stones.  Yet I want it to be a time of dancing, a time of finding and a time to gather the stones.  It is hard to sit here, hard to wait, to listen.  It is hard to trust and not be anxious and afraid.

Yet there is hope, signs of spring.  Just like the hint of buds on this dogwood tree, the daffodils that appear in  unexpected places around Williamsburg.  The promise is there.  I am called to wait, to trust, to listen. I am moving through, I am trying things, testing the waters, knocking on doors.  It is not just waiting, it is paying attention, it is risking putting myself out there - like with this blog post.

Is spring coming slowly for you or are you in the midst of it?