Updated 4/14/2021

Around this time of year I hear myself and others lament, “It’s spring! What’s with these freezing temps (or rain or snow.. or all three)?” As if we’re meant to go right from winter to summer, to suddenly arrive under Eden’s blue sky on March 22nd, sunbaked grass inviting us to lay down and search for animal shapes in beauty clouds.

But springtime as I’ve known it is chaos and angst. It’s a chubby infant on its hands and knees, rocking and groaning and rocking and groaning, trying to figure out how to move forward. It’s a toddler who bubbles with laughter, gives his mother Eskimo kisses, then spastically bites her. It’s a preteen with hormone surges.

Springtime is a tease, a mere glimpse of a promise.

Early this morning, snow sugared the budding branches of our Aspens. Rain clouds are next on deck.

Mama said there’d be days like this.

As a matter of fact, my mama really did say that. Well, she said it with a gift, and with her life.

Mom never gave a gift she hadn’t put great thought into. On the day I moved out—an eighteen-year-old gathering up her scant belongings and uncontainable hopes—my recently widowed mother handed me a present. A framed bit of wall art. Behind the glass were pressed flowers in muted colors, and these words:

It takes both rain and sunshine to make a rainbow.

It lent a pretty focal point to the bare white walls of my humble apartment just a stroll from the Pacific Ocean. But it’s taken me a lifetime to fully appreciate the message attached.

Mom was no Debbie Downer, but I understand now what she was trying to impart: If I thought that by escaping the sad, echoey house where my father had just surrendered his cancer fight I could leave winter behind forever . . . if I thought I could just step into a fresh new life, a shadowless place of endless summer . . . I had another think coming.

Because, well, seasons.

I’d so much to learn and experience. Moments of soaring followed by crash landings. Cycles of faith and doubt. Love. Loss. Joy. Grief.

here comes the sun

The four seasons are poignant God-painted metaphors for our earthly lives. But of all the seasons, spring best reflects the tension in which we daily dwell.

It’s the place we might experience all four seasons within twenty-four hours. Where hope and heartache coexist. Where we rock and groan on our hands and knees, straining to move forward. Where showers of grace fall and puddle all around us, yet plenty of prayers appear to go unanswered.

Maybe we tend to confuse springtime with summer the same way we confuse earth with heaven.

Here in the muddle, I meditate on Mom’s drop of wisdom. Times of standing in the rain contain mysterious purpose. And the God of the breakthrough is also the God of the storm clouds.

Sure enough, today’s promised precipitation is still drip, drip, dripping from the roof when a golden glow fills my dining room. Outside, the sun reflects so hard off the wet pavement I have to squint. I thrust my feet into Garth’s too-big-for-me boots and fly out the front door.

A lifetime has taught me this. The time to scan the skies is now.

Because days like this are the stuff of rainbows. So let everything that has breath praise the Lord. Hallelujah.

What about you? Can you name your storm clouds? Are you surveying the skies for a glimpse of a promise so you can name that too?

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