Marshes and Marshwiggles

     At some point in my life, I lost my imagination. 

     I don't mean misplaced it temporarily, like I do my cell phone at least once a month. I lost the ability I had as a child to see the wonder and creativity with which God infuses even the most ordinary things in the world.  There have been times in the last year or two where this lost friend briefly sparked, drawing near with its light and warmth, only to grow dim yet again as the business of life dampened its glow.

      A recent hike through a swampy woods on a blustery, 50 degree day in Northern Michigan rekindled that spark.

    I'll be honest - this was not where I intended to be. My plan for the day involved an NBA game and a nice cup of Cherry Chocolate coffee while vegging on my sofa, but here I was on a trail hemmed in by barely budding trees and surrounded by lots of wintery grays and browns. I don't mind wearing clothes with those lovely earth tones, but if I had to be hiking, I expected more from Spring.

     The dullness and potential serenity of this woodsy jaunt could not restrain my 6-year-old caffeine-in-a-bundle, Vincent; his equally frenetic friend Marilee, who was at times literally a blur; and my 12-year-old son Braden, who gamely tried to keep up with the other two.  Vincent took the lead (as he reminded us again and again - "Stop! Wait! I'm the leader!").  Makeshift wooden gun in hand, he fearlessly led us through a gray/brown maze of lingering winter bursting with wolves, superheroes, villains, and invisible zombie giants, as Marilee screamed at...something, I'm not sure what.  Bugs, maybe.

    I must have absorbed some of their energy, because I soon realized this ordinary woods offered a smorgasbord of very cool things. Uprooted trees might not actually be zombie forts, but they were pretty awesome in their own right.  So as the kids screamed and wildly shot giants with their stick guns, I fired up the camera app on my first generation Droid phone and started to see the mystery and wonder of the woods.

     I kept halting their breakneck progress to take pictures; I couldn't help it. Hints of beauty poked through everywhere. Cold, clear streams trickled over smoothed pebbles and under fallen birch branches. Yellow marsh lilies pushed their way through the dead reeds of the slowly warming swamp, pressing against an aging wooden boardwalk.  Almost without my noticing, the child in me reignited a spark of creative life, seeing a late Spring work its miracle where before I had only seen winter's lingering weariness and decay.

Shoveling the Drive of my Soul

     A strange winter blanketed Traverse City, Michigan this year.

     It didn't snow much; for a town that relies on tourist dollars, no snow news is bad news for snowmobilers and skiers. Personally, I wasn't terribly disappointed - I think I shoveled my drive three times.  But my kids wanted to sled, to build snowmen and make snow angels and fight from snow forts, to have a reason to come inside shivering and miserable and drink too much hot chocolate made with real milk and chocolate syrup.  They wanted a winter that froze their bones, with snow that glistened in the sun, hung on the trees, and buried us in our drive for five or six school days.

   But it hasn't been that kind of winter.

    This spring has been equally odd. In early March, we hit a stretch of eighty degree days, shattering all kinds of records. Confused trees budded; lost ducks returned too quickly; allergies wreaked havoc six weeks early. That was right after the worst snow storm I remember since moving here 15 years ago. We got 30 inches in about 24 hours at my house: heavy, blustery snow that snapped trees and power lines, ushered in states of emergency, and immobilized two minivans in my driveway for a couple days.
     Now we are back to normal, but the grass, flowers, and cherry trees don't know they aren't supposed to be out and about yet, and the frost is taking its toll on their cheery buds. We wanted a spring that gently and beautifully eased us from the snowpocalypse into the ordinary Jimmy Buffet summers of Traverse City  We wanted to shop at Menards, foolishly buying flowers in the heat of the moment that we could actually plant, not move inside every night for four more weeks.

  But it hasn't been that kind of spring.

  My life has had some Traverse City winters.

     I didn't like them; I wanted them to be real winters too. I don't like to grieve a little bit, or be slightly depressed, or just a little disappointed.  If I have to experience a spiritual or emotional winter, I want both barrels so it's worth my time.

     It's one thing to feel kind of down and just mope through the day; it's quite another to curl up on the sofa with an appetizer sampler platter from a local restaurant and bury my depression in The Road and deep-fried anything.  Now that's an emotional winter.  That's what I prefer - not because I like it, but because I can wrap my mind around the problem.  I want to shovel the drive of my soul until my back aches.

     I know I can't get around it, but I don't like just vaguely miss my Dad after watching We Bought A Zoo! That's like having a low-grade inflammation that makes me just queasy enough to feel slightly out of sorts.  I want The Road; I want my loss to hit me like a hammer, to lay me low, to MATTER. I want life to stop as my emotions get snowed in by a blizzard of grief, burying my happiness, snapping my schedule in a way that might take days to fix. I want a really good excuse for hot chocolate.

   That kind of winter.

    My life has had some Traverse City springs. 

    In my heart and soul, I want lilacs and beautiful flowering weeds to slowly and steadily push through last fall's unraked dead leaves and this winter's lingering piles of dirty snow so these persistent annuals can bring their beauty to my soul's decrepit yard.
     I want the hibernating couch potato side of me to overdo my first relational spring hike with my wife.  I want to rake my heart's yard not because I have to, but because the promise of summer love compels me.
     When it comes to spiritual spring, I want to see my character explode, my relationships blossom, my career be full of new momentum and life.

 But that's now how life often works.  

     Winters both spiritual and physical have corroded my soul. They eat slowly away at me, not cold enough to freeze me or brutal enough to move me.  They just...fester.  Nothing is strong enough to break or shut down anything, so I never pay attention like I should.  But there is also nothing to skate, sled, or ski on either. It's a season where nothing has to be ventured, and nothing is gained. It is Laodicean Winter.

   Springs both spiritual and physical tempt me with the promise of renewal, then turn on a moment's notice and freeze the new life that began.  Habits are gone! Until they emerge as methodically as ever.  God is close! Until He's distant. My ADD is contained! Until my brain freezes for a day and leaves my angry, desperate, and isolated. I finally know how to parent! Until I ignore my kids, and snap at them before the coffee kicks in in the morning, and we ride in silence to school.

That's how winter and spring usually work. 

     Ending this post on a really positive note doesn't seem honest.  I believe God honors honesty, and He knows my heart.  He made winter and summer; He knows what it means to be cold and lifeless, as well as to have warmth and hope. He knows I  sometimes don't know why I am unexpectedly cold, surprisingly hopeless, or oddly surprised by tenderness and love.

     He knows how He intended winter and spring to be in the world He first made. He know how they actually are now.

     He also know what summer is for, and that I'm waiting for the warmth of the Son.

Wintery Theology

    We got about 2 feet of snow here in Traverse City last night.  The view from my window this morning was beautiful.

But the beauty of winter is a mixed blessing. While the snow hangs delightfully on the trees, and my boys made a 6-foot-tall snowball, and snowmobilers are out in force, there is downside. Thousands are without power, a lot of people ended up in the ditch, and the city declared a State of Emergency.
 

In my own yard I see this tension between beauty and pain. The branches on the apple tree hang to the ground like a wintery willow, but some of those branches will break, and I will not get apples next fall.  My dog loved playing in the snow - but my dogwoods were smashed to the ground by the weight of the storm.

     Winter is one of those seasons that highlights the tension between the pain embedded in a fallen creation and the beauty that still lingers from God's original design.  Winter has moments that remind us what this world could have been like if it had not fallen: a world where the beauty of snow does not carry with it the danger of death and destruction; a world in which happiness and awe do not have to be tempered by the sobering reality of death and destruction. While we enjoy the displays of God's creativity and power, in the background we hear the groaning of a creation waiting for redemption. (Or was that my boys when I told them it was time to shovel?)

  In Game of Thrones, Eddard Stark keeps warning people: "Winter is coming."  For us, winter is already here.  There is a season in which living things die, killed by that which is simultaneously beautiful, stark, glorious and dark. We live in a world inhabited by a lot of things that go bump in the night, that crouch just around the corner waiting to do us in.  If we are not careful, our very souls become wintery, frozen and blustery, refusing to see the beauty around us as we slide into the ditches that rob us of life.

    But Spring is on the way. New life is just around the corner.  The winter of our discontent does not have to turn into a life of disillusionment.  Even on the coldest, most blustery days, God embeds his beautiful, broken world with reminders that He is not limited by the ravaging effect that our freely chosen sin has had on our existence.  Even as I type this, I know that underneath the snow in my front yard hyacinths have already broken through, ready for the warmth and life of spring.
 
   The world may be temporarily broken - it is still wintery - but it is still His.  And He is pretty good at putting things right.