Spring

When I took the call to pastor down in Galveston, Gareth finally was old enough to start participating in Children's moments during worship.  He's my child, so his extroversion during those talks wasn't a surprise - "MOMMY.  I played TRANSFORMERS in the class!"  But what keeps surprising me even now, in a new call in Houston, is what he does when I tell the children it is time to pray.  I ask them to hold hands or touch shoulders, but Gareth doesn't do that.  Instead he LEAPS BODILY upon me.  Like this:

I'm always wearing a microphone, so when he flings himself in my arms, a muffled "WHOMP" sound rings through the sanctuary.  I hold him tight and I pray with his warm face next to my chest.  Then he runs off to Children's church, as if that was the most normal part of his day.  I'm certainly not going to tell him to stop, at least not right now.  He turns 5 next month, so I suspect that he will stop jumping into my arms soon enough.  He will be a kindergartener in the fall, and 1st grade after that, a boy growing without ceasing.  Eventually, we will reach the season of life where running full tilt into your mommy's arms is very, very unwelcome.  But, not yet.

The seasons have turned here in Houston as well.  We had none of the drastically cold weather of my friends and family in the north, but we did have what felt like WEEKS of rain.  Days and days and days of drizzles and clouds and wet pant hems.  But now?  The sun shines and we eat out on porches of restaurants, we walk around the neighborhood and become familiar faces at neighborhood parks.  Spring has come and there are yards to be mowed (by Gene) and windows to be opened and shorts to be dug out of the back of drawers.  We Texans know that this season passes too quickly and that the sweltering heat of Summer quickly tumbles through the skies.  But, not yet.

Much of the last four years of my life felt like Winter.  Interminable, implacable, winter.  Remember in The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe how it was always Winter and never Christmas?  I knew  that reality intimately.  When you live in winter, you imagine Spring to its last detail: 

"When Spring comes, I will feel..."

"When Spring comes, I will do..."

"When Spring comes, I will go...."

"When Spring comes, I will be..."

You dream of Spring, of life and possibility, of breezes and blooms and the light skies pushing back  the dark dreariness of a dormant world.

But the seasons have finally turned.  Christmas has come and the icy claws of winter have melted, and green growing things have blossomed out of the soil of my life.  

I have taken my fair share of turns around the Sun, so I know that Spring doesn't always remain, that all the seasons of life must make their appearance.  I know that no one stays a newlywed forever, that parenting presents a never-ending flood of learning opportunities, that new churches reveal their imperfections eventually.  But I have lived through enough passing seasons to cherish when Spring finally does arrive.  And it has for me.  In the arms of a man.  In the embrace of a new call.  In the face of my son.  In the faithful love of my God.  

Spring will eventually pass, and Summer will hold court.  

But, not yet. 

Keele Woods in spring

   © Copyright Peter Styles