After I Feel the Sun on My Face

Whenever I'm walking on a warm spring day, thankful that winter seems to have receded, a lyric that my friend Karla penned tends to come back to me, especially if it's been a particularly rough season of time.

Karla wrote, "And after I feel the sun on my face/ my soul, it will sprout again/ and I might become a tangled mess of love and fear and faith..."

I think of that line, and pray for sprouting.

I think of that line and remember a moment overseas, walking with a friend, when that lyric first hit me.  When I felt that stirring of growth within me, seemingly out of season.

I was thinking of both of those things today as I walked to get lunch and felt the sun on my face, restoring my exhausted body and soul.

I was thinking of how many things changed after that moment overseas, and how it seemed for a season that all growth had been snuffed out.

That there was only death and cold and winter.

I'm feeling the stirrings of growth within me again these days.

It's both a welcome and familar, and totally uncomfortable and unfamiliar feeling.

I was reflecting that it seems to have been a long process of germination, these years of time between those first stirrings and now.  And how now I don't expect a sudden growth or sprouting, but more of a slow thing.  I believe that the sudden sprouting can and may happen, but I don't think I invest myself fully in expecting that anymore.

And maybe that's okay too.

Maybe that, too, is growth.

In any case, as exhausted as I am.  As challenging as some facets of life remain, I feel that stirring of growth.

And I welcome it.