Spring Will Come

Somehow I don’t think it’s happenstance that Easter falls in the springtime on our calendars. God is a master of metaphor, after all, and he delights in giving us natural whispers that echo deeper truths. And after a long winter like this one, I think we’re all extra attuned to the cues of spring this year.

There’s something about waking up to the melodies of birdsongs that makes you wonder if new life just might be possible. There’s something about feeling the warm kiss of sunshine after record-setting snowfalls that makes you think there really might be such a thing as second chances. There’s something about seeing the first bunch of daffodils poke their golden heads out after a long winter that makes you believe in miracles again.

I just celebrated my ten-year anniversary of living in my house, affectionately dubbed the Nut House. (Whether that’s an allusion to my street address or to its occupant is anyone’s guess.) It’s the first place I lived on my own, and when it came time to move in, I felt scared and alone. Somehow I’d always imagined buying my first place with a husband—getting a cute starter home together and putting up with squeaky faucets and endearingly hideous olive green wallpaper until we could afford to fix it up. What I never pictured was jumping into that milestone solo.

I’d bought the place in an uncharacteristically split-second decision, not knowing much about the city or neighborhood beforehand. I remember going on a walk the day after I moved in, trying to get my bearings (and also to prevent myself from hyperventilating over how many boxes I still had to unpack and how I didn’t even know where the grocery store was).

As I ambled haphazardly along the path, I turned a corner, and all at once I was greeted by a canvas of yellow. Apparently the world had exploded in daffodils while I’d been busy worrying about other things. In that moment, I sensed God whispering to me that it was going to be okay. He was doing a new thing, and there would be new life, and I wasn’t always going to feel like daffodil bulb stuck under the dirt, struggling to break through the surface.

Ten springs have passed since that day, and my home is now brimming with memories and music and love. Over the course of a decade, friends and neighbors and guests and family have crossed the threshold of my door. Secrets and dreams and prayers and meals have been shared between those walls. I have started to grow into my own skin there. And to my great surprise, I now share this residence with a husband (who was entirely worth the wait) and the guitars and bicycles that moved in with him.

Last week Daniel and I went on a walk together to mark the tenth anniversary of the place both of us now call home. The daffodils were bursting gold along the path, just as they always do.

And as the sun streamed between the tree branches and onto my neck, it felt like God was whispering the reminder to me again, a decade in the making:

Winter does not last forever. Spring comes. Spring always comes.

Our Lord has written the promise of resurrection, not in books alone, but in every leaf in springtime.
— Martin Luther