To Spring: I love you
on springtime and sanctification
Written in 2022, I share this piece now as my heart yearns for Spring once more, as it has done for the past five years. This yearning and delight was once a novelty but is now so familiar, and my core-being will always be a California girl, one who loves the warmth of the sun and the lengthening of the days. (She still loves the rain and the winter, but not for as long as she used to in years past.)
This piece alludes to my membership at my current church as a culmination of the years 2020-2023 as well. To this day, I rejoice in what the Lord used 2020 for in my life. Spring has been so sweet since.
It is no surprise, really, that I have come, at long last, to love Spring. To look forward with great anticipation to the growing of leaves on barren trees, and the budding of flowers in fields and near sidewalks. To breathe deep the changing morning air that is now dappled with a sunlight which caresses the early hour. To feel sad, actually, when the sun seeks refuge behind clouds for about a week. To turn toward this glorious, ebullient time of year with a heart for more.
I think back to the years gone by, when I very nearly despised this season, only appreciating it as the harbour that would take me to Summer, and urging it to take me there as quickly as possible. I remember my vain efforts to value it for what it was, in those first few steps on my path here. I could not promise it my true allegiance, so I had to acknowledge that I desired it for what it would bring me—and what I actually wanted—the longer, warmer, freer days of Summer.
But those first few pitiful steps are what signalled change. Slow, imperfect change, to be sure, but change nevertheless. I look back to the Spring of 2020 with all of the fondness in the world. The days were filled with little wonders and simple delights: being with my family every day, all day because of quarantine, lifting weights outside as it got warmer (to expedite the sunbathing efforts, of course); writing my introductory paragraph and thesis for my Armenian History research paper outside on the back porch; morning walks that smelled of growth and peace and had me stopping to take snaps of the gorgeous white roses on the path side; my feet hitting the track with each stride towards conditioning and in my new Nikes that Daddy got for me; windows open as I attempted my umpteenth banana loaf of the month; and on and on and on.
And then it was the freshness of 2021, and I found myself looking forward to Spring, truly, for the first time. I couldn’t wait for the warmth and sunshine and purple smells of Springtime dusk. I recall these days with delight, and I caress these memories as they dance around my head: that delicious, beautiful, and wonderful walk after my all-nighter, a night of many words, and a walk that elicited even more; the creation of playlists with newer sounds and fresh movements (a foreshadowing); sunbathing and reading the Emily trilogy for the first time, devouring book two on an evening walk, reading book three through the night, and weeping over it come morning; devouring the glories of Lewis’ Space Trilogy at home and in Scott’s Valley; our Spring-fling-Shadow-and-Bone reading picnic; the cool, velvety air brushing skin, the sweet dapples of soft sunlight; commingled warmth and breeze wafting through kitchen windows; the reading hangover that I should have seen coming—but the delight that reading Orwell would bring me as I entered a new chapter: the muse chapter, the chapter of birthed chapters, etc, etc.
The preparation for commencement—final weeks of school, taking Bible quizzes at night and writing discussion boards on the balcony, FaceTiming Megan on my actual graduation day, with Melody at my side and Subway for lunch after, my last ever Starbucks of undergrad as I wrote my final undergraduate paper: a thrilling exploration of the police-state of Nazi Germany, the joy that it was to write words and express thoughts, and that last day, when I closed the chapter on my Bachelor’s degree around two or three in the afternoon, took a breath, and laid down on my bed.
The sweetness of family with me the next day, cap, gown, and all. Taking grad pictures with my Julies the day after that. Fragrant memories that I will treasure forever.
And oh, the dulcet freedom that followed. Summer, technically, yes. But it was May, and summer was still a month away. The last chapter of Spring 2021 was spent in respite. Nothing but lolling about at home, a return to reading again, as I finally closed my Orwell essay collection, and other such soft delights.
This appreciation for Spring—an appreciation that is paralleled in different areas of my life—is like unto sanctification. In fact, some of it arises as a direct result of being sanctified further.
Because what this ultimately is—this, being an esteemed regard for Spring—is a raising of the ceiling of my gratitude.
In foregone years, I have led a very ungrateful life. I have despised the manna, I have disdained the ordinary, and I have disparaged Spring. I lived for the ultimate weekend, Summer, and I belittled the rest of the year (with the exception of Christmas) as less than grand, less than beautiful, less than everything. My gratitude ceiling was very low, and it reflected the mind and heart of a young, immature, and spoilt little girl.
It must not be mistaken: I have yet very, very far to go. I am likely to spend the rest of my life in the pursuit of a more grateful heart. However, I can safely say that I am not who I was a mere two years ago. I am certainly not who I was five years ago. And I am absolutely, without a doubt, a very different person than the girl I was ten years ago.
It is only by the process of sanctification that I find myself here. It is by the grace of the Holy Spirit’s work in my life that I am even writing these words.
Five years ago, at this time, the Holy Spirit was leading me away from the shallow theology of my childhood church that I had known my whole life. I was deepening my understanding of the better, biblical theology that I had always received at home. I was leaving behind the idea that I am the master of my own salvation, and that the onus for all is myself. I was instead embracing the very gracious and comforting truth that God is truly sovereign in all things—especially, and most wonderfully, in my salvation.
As I warmed to this new framework, this new lens with which to view my life, my heart was changed. The selfishness that I carried about my future was shed; the feelings I would have had about being shut indoors with my family for such a long time or about the fact that we were not, in fact, going to be staying at the beach for a week as we had become accustomed to, were gone. They were not present. There was hardly a whiff or a hint of them to be seen.
And with these new emotions and attitudes, came a newfound wonder of the world and my situation in it.
That first Spring in 2020 was a turning point. Nothing in my life, really, would ever be the same again. And it hasn’t. For the best.
Instead of my vain attempts to be a rose, a rose that blooms and is redolent only of itself, I was transformed into a tulip. A small bulb was planted in fertile ground, and it was slowly watered and sunned by the Word of God and the ever-growing encouragement of my two best friends who have now been transplanted themselves.
In the spring of 2022, my little tulip was fed as it never had been before. My growth prior to this Spring was quite big, quite developmental considering that it could not be placed in the proper setting that would maximise its growth. The ground was fertile, but it was not lush. It provided, but only just so. The showers were life-giving, but only enough to sustain. The rays of heat supplied a warmth that was just keeping me from frostbite. But—the arrival of April placed my tulip in firm footing, with rain and sun to revive a slightly wilted bearing. Sometimes, a little rain is withheld by some hurried wind which carries the storm clouds away. Sometimes, the sun is blocked by mirky skies. Sometimes, it feels like the ground beneath me is about to be stripped away.
But, by the providence of God and the sanctification of the Holy Spirit, my tulip sprouts and grows, a new bulb being added every so often as the footing becomes more secure, and the foundation gets closer to permanence. An enjoyment and welcoming of Spring grows too, to the point where I crave it as never before, missing its usual presence at this time of year.
And so, as I wrote a few weeks ago:
I return to this absolute dump heap of thoughts with realisations and epiphanies about Spring that now seem inevitable, honestly, given how much similar thought patterns have changed in the last few years of my life.
As has been the case with many of the mundane things I now romanticise, my mind has turned and my heart has changed, and I can now wholeheartedly say that I greatly anticipate the arrival of Spring. Not only that, but when it comes, I rejoice and fill very full, very satisfied, very much alive and happy under blue skies, alongside green lawns, and with the view of tulips, daffodils, and Japanese cherry blossoms before me.
Praise be to God, this tulip was permanently planted on fertile, lush ground in my current church in June of 2023! A very happy Springtime to you all <3
Ahh Spring! When Lal ' thorn was born.....when abandonment happened...when "Jesus help me, but...." happened...when Tio Conrad and Tia O left the land of the dying....Yes beloved eldest...certainly..SPRING!!!