I’ve got a mad case of the birthday blues. No one wants to hear about how your birthday makes you sad, or at least I don’t believe anyone wants to hear about how my birthday makes me sad. Or maybe I just don’t want it to make me sad.
But ok, I’ll confess. I can’t help finding something deeply romantic about sadness. It’s just — in this cocoon of melancholy, it’s all the more obvious where to burrow into tenderness and beauty. Especially in springtime. Spring can be such a somber season, because look, the sky is crying too! Nature weeps for a while, then holds its breath, and there is peace.
I do love the stillness of late May, the almost-not-quite summer. I’ve been walking Saint in the cool of the day, mornings and evenings around my neighborhood and the trail by my high school. Light is still surprisingly, deliciously, beautifully precious, and the romance of glimpsing what we were made for overwhelms the gravitational pull toward despair. I read Psalm 100 recently, and I like the ESV’s ‘make a joyful noise’. Just one, if that’s all I have. A gentle exhale of joy — this is something I can do, and springtime shows me how.
I’m going to be 25 soon. I was telling my mom the other day how this year, more than ever, I’ve got the feeling everything is going to change. When I said it out loud it seemed obvious to the point of being dumb, but in my heart there’s a weight to 25. There is a steady and deeply felt invitation to come closer and be near, and also to be gentle. There’s a precious fragility I sense about this upcoming year. I’m not sure where it came from or what it might mean; I just know I want to be thoughtful about it all.
I can’t decide how I feel about reflecting on 24. It was hard. I often felt broken. Although, not to be terribly cliche, but I’m starting to wonder if the fractures I felt were really evidence of healing, a calloused body becoming new again. The Lord covered me with joy, again and again and again.I am sure 25 will be much of the same, in fact I pray it will.
Crossing my fingers love is waiting for me (and you, and you, and you) just around the bend.
Xx
