How am I? Contemplative. Not as if I've carved out enough time in my brain or my schedule yet to be so, I am however, at the very least feeling compelled to be contemplative. The state of my mind is very much like the subtle rocking from side to side that one feels in their boat just before the wind picks up and changes direction.Whether that change be in speed or stability or merely the position of the sails and rudder a shift in the wind always brings change. This shift in my life feels the same way that the air does when the sun disappears behind the mountains back home and creates a new wind on the lake where I sail bringing with it the scent of day-warmed earth out onto the water. With that thermal always comes a change, whether it be breeze or gale, where there was before sunset an otherwise steady climate. My climate has been, if nothing else, steady for the last few months. Steadily busy, steadily challenging and satisfying to say steadily productive. But now, today, this week, now I begin to feel the shift.
It seems appropriate that the seasons are changing in my life as the weather turns from winter to spring and I love how in Colorado this change happens in the same dramatic fashion as young lovers staging a public breakup or perhaps more like a class clown getting his last few tricks in before his captive audience as he's expelled to the principles office. Ahhh, spring storms! My life changes just like the seasons I think, with nearly as much regularity and often with the same lack of participation on my behalf as a tree has with the falling and sprouting again of its leaves. Just as I find myself in a season where my heart seems open to receive love and feels warm enough to give it away without hesitation there comes a shift and the next thing I know I'm again waking up with the spring looking back on what seems to have been a cold and closed season that has passed me by without my permission or even my awareness. The bloom of my life goes to sleep under the snow-like blanket of busyness, broken-hearted withdrawal or some such love-cooling weather pattern. If there is one thing that should live in perpetual spring, summer and fall but never winter it is my heart. It is these winters that store up for me regrets and that is bitter produce to harvest.
Perhaps spending time in Colorado has effected my soul for the better by giving me the example of seasons where even the coldest days are still brilliant with sunshine and the snowiest storms are followed by the mysterious revealing of greener grasses beneath the snow than there was before the blanket fell. Hmm...I like the idea that the seasons of my soul could be a little more like that. Regardless of this predictable winter's return all I have is hope for the eventuation that perpetual summer will one day be alive in my heart. For I find that I am constantly in awe of how this constantly breaking mechanism inside my chest has been mended and crushed and reshaped and broken and mended over and over again and there have somehow been much needed improvements and priceless additions as a result of the brokenness every time. It would seem that the one doing these repairs is infinitely creative and impressive in the work that He does.
What reshaping is ahead of me next I have only to wonder over. If there has been any consistency to the theme of my breaking and remakings of the past it is that the latest version of my heart is always a little more pliable and a little less cold than the last and now I can be stretched and there is endurance within me and with it my capability to burn more fiercely in the hot seasons. I could be discouraged that after years of making what feels like the same journey I am once again discovering that there are cold, solitary places in my heart where I undoubtedly shun even the unconditional love my maker would have me know, and certainly I keep other love out as well. And yet I know how far I've come and how gentle a journey I have been allowed to take, slow as any child on unsteady feet may be, and I realize with joy that this season is less bitter and more sweet than was the one before and someday....someday I will run in the endless summer of my soul and all the cold will be gone.
Until then I will set my eyes on the coming wind and wait with more excitement than apprehension to see what remaking will be done this time around...
