Vernal Equinox
As of 2:24 pm PDT last Monday, March 20th, Spring arrived in the Northern Hemisphere. If you have been reading along, you know I’m in the middle of a series about marriage. It has taken some mental and soul effort to get the pieces out and an intermission felt appropriate, for me and you. So this here is a palate cleanser.
Our lighter evenings are spent down at the water or “hiking” through the forest by our home.
Hudson also found a stick and is protecting our position, naturally.
Last week the Puget Sound turned its face from Winter to Spring. The annual shift is slow and indecisive. We have frost coated cars in the morning, soaking rains scattered with random days of brilliantly sunny 60 degree weather. Until one day the sun breaks around noon and extends its warmth to just past seven. With the loss of an hour, our bodies are preoccupied and slow to change. However after a string of unadulterated golden days, our Vitamin D soaked brains accept the hope, Spring has come at last.
However this year, my mind was still taking in the lessons of winter and I realized I wasn’t ready to give dark weather the boot quite yet.
To be clear, summer in Seattle is the pinnacle of beauty and is our bright light at the end of the tunnel. It is this beauty that gives us Seatte-ites any form of stamina during winter. I don’t know if it’s because baking has become more centerfold to my winter and thus I’m better preoccupied. Or if it’s again one of those adjustments that happens in parenthood where the mundane becomes the meaning making. Whatever it is, I am seeing the need to sit in winter, in the dark tunnel of time it creates so that when Spring breaks the dark, I am rested and ready for work. I am not languishing, depleted of life’s nutrition or lacking purpose. It could simply be that winter slows us down long enough to reflect and connect the present to our past, giving us direction for the future. This is too lyrical, so let me explain.
The first signs of spring in our backyard appear with the camellias.
Life of late hasn’t been easy, for anyone. Or it has not gone as expected. For some that could have begun prior to the pandemic, I think for the majority the pandemic was the wrench that threw life “off course”. Life was stalled. It was like getting stuck in a line for a ride at Disneyland, we were waiting with anticipation for what we knew would resume. Well the line finally started moving, we got on the ride and it broke down again. And again. But also, they changed the ride and it’s been shortened. We also found out the park is closing early and the cost of everything has increased in the past hour by fifteen percent. We want to go home.
Even with Covid further “behind”, or however you see it, life is harder. We are sicker, we are more stressed or financially insecure or politically divided or you name it. We have been in the tunnel, waiting for the light. Which begs the question, what is the light? What are we waiting for, when will we “feel” like we are breaching the tunnel? These are the questions I have been wrestling with this winter. There have been a few “aha moments” that seem to be getting me somewhere to the answer.
One moment was my birthday in October. How much sweeter were our birthdays this past year? Our first vacation after the pandemic? The first wedding or concert we got to attend post quarantine? Annual dates and holidays are gifts now, pleasures especially when shared with family and friends in person. Meeting new people feels different, hard in some ways, exciting and better in others. The stark relief of being among others was palpable. We are alive, we are here, we get to be present.
Crab observing down at Normandy Beach Park.
A more specific “aha” moment of late was church. Lucas and I attended an awesome church for nearly a decade. Right before having Hudson and the pandemic we moved to another city and tried commuting and staying connected to the community. It was a dark, long road of feeling removed and distant. We knew we were being called to find a more local community but saying goodbye during the pandemic placed us in isolation and feeling lost. Eventually, and with help, we were able to find a local church we got connected into quickly. The first few times we attended I drank deeply, we didn’t know how dehydrated we had been.
Church for many can be synonymous to community: where people are able to share life, raise children together, gain the village our side of society has lost in the pursuit of individual satisfaction. For the Christ follower however, church goes a step further and allows the individual soul to be unified with others through the Holy Spirit. This is a mystery of faith far beyond my level of pay to explain, but it’s real and beautiful. I know this to be true because I have walked closely in communities prior to Christ, and there is a tangible difference in the quality, knowledge and depth one experiences with others when Christ sits in the center. There is power in the gathering of saints that brings healing, conviction, repentance, joy, peace, etc. It is humble and meek and does not require large buildings or beautifully curated stages. We need simply to gather.
For me, the tunnel in its truest form has been isolation. Which began at the start of motherhood, months before Covid-19 reached Washington state. Parenting can be a lonely journey. That is true for moms and dads, stay-at-home or working. We are not made to be sitting alone in separate boxes (re: our homes or offices), looking at human faces through screens. It’s not good for the brain or soul. This has been a fight to care for my soul and integral to that practice is meaningful communion with others.
We would not have known how important being with others is, if we had not experienced a pandemic. If we didn’t have Covid, I would not appreciate gathering around a birthday cake, singing loudly off-key. I would be slower to say yes to girls nights or volunteering for school auctions. I would not appreciate how beautiful it is to see familiar faces weekly at church. The pandemic has placed us on a different trajectory to the one we anticipated four years ago. It is not without loss but it does not need to be one without hope or equal purpose.
The winter dark broke through the vernal equinox, but if we are not careful, we could confuse the coming spring rain for the darkness of the tunnel. We are past the tunnel, we have come through. I have a choice now to see what to make of the future. Also maybe avoid metaphorical Disneyland while they get their act together.
The beach collection has already begun to grow this spring.
Sea glass, barnacle rocks, sand dollars, clam and oyster shells…
