Has endless winter ended?

I’m hopeful.

I can hear a flock of birds outside my kitchen window and it’s supposed to get up to 70 today.  Maybe spring has come to stay.

One of my dearest friends is coming to visit tomorrow, along with her fabulous daughter, so that we can spend the weekend at Comic Con together.  Her daughter is going to Cosplay as Kaylee from Firefly, which makes me want to stay in close enough proximity to absorb her coolness.

In a few weeks Mr. Right and I are going spend the weekend in Nashville so we can catch a Steve Taylor concert.  This. is. awesome.

Cheesy is running track for the first time this spring, with a local private school.  She’s currently doing the long jump, triple jump and the 100 meters.  She’s also doing Tae Kwon Do two days a week, and has recently earned her yellow first belt.  It’s been fascinating to see her sense of herself change as she’s become more physically active.  She’s happier, more confident, more focused.  Maybe I should try exercise…

B. Lake finally finished with wrestling season and is also running track.  He just got new track shoes, a color of fuchsia not found in nature.  But he likes them, so who am I to judge?

Baph and Striker are working at the same Applebee’s.  Baph is a cook, and loves it.  Striker is a host and has found the perfect job.  It mostly involves her smiling and talking to people, and if you know Striker you know how much that suits her.

And Bee…well, Bee is still sweet and funny and easy to be around.  I believe the proper word is “companionable”.

As for me, I’m hoping that my own endless winter is also ending.  Jesus has been very present lately as I’ve been sorting things out, both vocational and personal.  But then, the vocational is personal, and I’m starting to think that my ministry will always be tied to my weaknesses as much as my strengths.  So I can teach:  big deal.  Lots of people can teach.  But my particular bundle of joys and failures and enthusiasms and longings – that’s mine, uniquely.  And sometimes it connects with other people and their own unique bundles.  We’re like Venn diagrams; not overlapping perfectly, but enough to recognize and share some things that matter.

And oddly enough, that’s satisfying to me these days:  connections, openness, truthfulness.  Giving and receiving grace.  If that’s all I ever get to do as a friend, as a pastor, as a parent, as a spouse…well, that’s not half bad.  Maybe approaching 50 means that I’m okay with not setting the world on fire.  Maybe I can define significance in a more modest way.  I am letting go of some ambitions, clearing them out of the way so that new life can spring up from what has been, I must admit, pretty barren soil lately.

We are deep in Lent, everything outside is still bare and brown and muddy.  But spring is finally here.  Resurrection is coming, and I am not finished.

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