the fallow season

winter in new england is for me, kind of awful.  it's cold and bleak and barren. it's colorless and uninviting, and so for me, it's depressing.  i wonder why anyone would have settled here once the leaves fell off and the ground froze.  but here i am.  i am here. in winter.  in a season. plunked down and like much of life, asked to be still in it.  to wait. to listen.

i used to think that people grow up.  that we get to an age, a number of years, and we settle into ourselves and our lives.  that we know the routine, we've worked out our deal, we get it.  we've found our place in the world.  but i'm finding that isn't true.  that our lives are about change and seeking and finding and learning and unlearning and really discovering, continually, who we are and who God is and who other people are too. there is no endgame. no arrival.  i'm finding that there are no caps on suffering, and no limits on joy- that life is full of surprises and awakenings- that come in forms of goodness and hardness.

but there are some key things that are available all the time- through the goodness and the badness and the parts of life that just are what they are without needing a label. and those key things, those guarantees are Grace and Love.

grace: unmerited divine assistance given humans for their regeneration or sanctification; an
act or instance of kindness (the dictionary)

love: that thing we all crave and  spend our lives trying to get - through various healthy but often unhealthy ways, that thing we want to know that we are, that we want to share and give out, that we misuse all the time, but that we all have and if we could just open up and embrace it we could stop driving ourselves crazy and ruining things.  (me)

i like to look for God outside.  

i like to feel His presence in the warm wind and hear him in the leaves moving, and in the colors and the smell of the outside.  these days, it's hard to see life and hard to feel God in the way that i am used to.  it's just so cold.  there is just so much snow.  everything is white and gray. and life is up in the air.  kite strings. unsettled. we are displaced. we are wondering what's next.  we are a group of moving pieces. pieces that sometimes seem to be moving in opposite directions. all of this, in this bone cold place. a place of my history, and now my present reality, (at least for today).  all of this with out the broad smiles of home, with out the red dirt that i love and the constant sounds of birds and leaves, with out the smell of burning things. some days it feels like too much.   but somehow, in the new england winter, even though i feel blind to certain parts of God, i can hold on to somethings that don't change.  i can hold on to that truth that i am deeply loved, as i am, by the One who invented love. and so are you. and this is real. and when we accept it and turn toward it, it is life changing.  because how can it not be? I am loved- as i AM.  YOU are loved - as you ARE.  not when we're good enough, not if we're good enough, not if other people tell us we are loveable, not if we even feel it, or don't.  we just are- because God made you and me and like i can't help loving my kids- God can't help loving us.  not only that, but perfectly- that is the way that God loves, unlike how i love my kids, which is way imperfectly.  we are valued for who we are- in our own special, crazy, imperfect, learning and re-learning and trying way. 

sometimes, like these days, it gets old and i feel tethered. the kids want to go home. they keep losing there gloves (the mismatched ones from the used store).  they miss their dog, and their friends and their own beds, and not having to wear snow pants. and i am right there with them. 

but then comes the Grace.  it comes when i'm walking back from the bus stop in the morning and i hear a bird, and the sun is hitting the snow with early morning light that is still soft and gentle, not yet hard and glaring. it comes when i see zoe get on the minibus and ride to an amazing free public school with all sorts of services.  it comes when i see mike shoveling out the car beside the snow fort "eggloo" and i know that home is really where ever we are all together. it comes in singing the same songs in church as we do across the world and getting goosebumps, even if i'm the only one dancing in my seat. it comes in the generosity of family and friends taking us in, sharing homes and winter coats and sending sweaters.  it comes in the uninvited blessing of having a season of stillness.  

the fallow season is the longest here.  a time of dormancy. of the ground healing, preparing itself.  a necessary time before the planting, before the growing can happen. a time of regeneration, of restoring. but there is grace in this, when we enter a time for our ground to heal.  not glamorous, not pretty, full of roots and sticks and rocks and brown things. there is absence even. but out of this time comes the ability to produce. for things to sprout and bloom. for beauty and nourishment.  

so i will be still and wait. i will turn and sit with the Love- let it sink in and warm me.  i will look around, i will listen, i will pay attention and find the Grace.