Spring is Coming

May 30, 2021 — Laura House

I don’t know how spring has transpired where you live, but in Virginia, it’s been nuts. In past years, the warmth of spring and the appearance of blooms always occurred early, with the historic average temperatures in March in the upper 50’s, April upper 60’s, and May upper 70’s. Usually.

With great anticipation this year, I readied my porch in April to receive the pots of delicate flowers that I enjoy so much, only to wake up to chilly temperatures several times that month. Eventually May came, the community pool next door opened, and I went to work planting an assortment of unusual flowers on my tiny patio. Then the heat turned to cold again, and I dragged them all inside so the cold nights wouldn’t cause their demise.

But finally last week, we enjoyed temperatures in the lower 90’s— sunshine, warmth, walking in shorts and T-shirts, and even an hour in the pool. Spring was here to stay! Or so I thought!

Unbelievably, as I write today, it’s only 50 degrees again outside! How can it be?

Virginia’s spring this year reminds me of the fluctuating emotions of grief, especially in the first year or two, where you experience a back and forth roller-coaster ride between feeling like you can survive the moment, to despondency and despair. One day (or moment) you feel like you have made so much progress and you’re going to make it through, and the next, you feel like you are back where you began, with Spring nowhere in sight. If you are early in your grief journey, you can rest assured that this occurrence is normal and take comfort in knowing that it will eventually change.

Early in my grief, I found that the words to Steven Curtis Chapman’s album, Beauty Will Rise, expressed many of the emotions I was experiencing but couldn’t articulate. The opening verse of one song, Spring is Coming, says this:

“We planted the seed while the tears of our grief soaked the ground; The sky lost its sun, and the world lost its green to lifeless brown. Now the chilling wind has turned the earth hard as stone; And silently seed rise beneath ice and snow; And my heart's heavy now; But I'm not letting go of this hope I have that tells me; Spring is coming, Spring is coming, And all we've been hoping and longing for soon will appear; Spring is coming, Spring is coming; It won't be long now, it's just about here.”

I’ve discovered that even years down the road, grief still brings moments of winter again. But when those moments come, I have found that we can cling to God’s promise to be near and to bring comfort— and He is faithful to walk with us. In the midst of moments of grief, there is also great joy that springs up through the grief, a reminder that this world is not our final home. 

This life is merely the precursor to our permanent life of eternity.

I Thessalonians 4: 13-18 states, “But we do not want you to be uninformed, brethren, about those who are asleep, so that you will not grieve as do the rest who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus.  For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep.”

“For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.  Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord.  Therefore comfort one another with these words.”