Winter’s Conversation At The 11th Hour
She asked me, “How long will winter last?”
“It will last a few months”, I said.
She was wrestling with the sight of the naked trees and the cold that penetrated her bones. It was a cold vulnerability brought on by the questions of life seeking to be stripped of surface appearances to move into the depths of meaning.
“Spring will come again and when it does, you will know it. You will start to feel it, then you will start to see it, then you will begin to know it in your warming bones.” I said softly, but firmly… pausing in silence before adding:
“But, you might first start to know it before you see it too, for there is no foretelling what part of the process you will understand first.”
She was starting to realize that winter was her heart made cold by the disappointments of life and her view of its meaning, which often felt like no meaning at all. Her heart would see Spring again, like when she was a little girl running in the fields of an open imagination. These wide open spaces would begin to open her narrow mind again. The sun will penetrate her bones to reveal what was in them the entire time.
She looked at me with part fear and part hope, though fear seemed to still be winning as she said,
“Do you really think I will feel it in the depths of my bones? I have not felt hope for a long time. My mind races with possibilities, but also with worst-case scenarios.”
I smiled, looked straight into her soul, into those eyes of fear and growing wonder saying,
“There is One who has waited a lot longer than you for you to know what you were designed to know. When both your waitings are over, you will see a Love that suffers long… long into the ages and long into the past, yet ever present to reveal how loved you are.”
“When both your waitings are over……Love…..how loved you are” were resounding in her body.
And there it was, that growing sparkle appearing in her eyes as I had said those last four words, “how loved you are.” There was the Light of the World appearing in her. There was the Life that gives life to everyone shining through. There was the hope of all time being revealed in this present moment. Here was the hope of being and she was awakening to what she shall become.
“You cannot stop Spring from coming, you can only deny, falsely, that it will not come or has not come when it does.”
It was then that I saw in a sanctified imagination, the first flower begin its process of blooming as it came out from under her snow-covered soul. I know she could not see it yet, but she could feel the beginnings of life pushing forth from within the soil of her soul beginning its ascent through the paradox of winter, the paradox of life. Soon that sun would shine brighter as the melting of what covered the mystery of her life continued its process. She was starting to feel that she, nor anyone else, could prevent what Life was generating. Much weight was lifted off her shoulders after her wait for continued understanding.
“When Both your waitings are over…”
How much longer? She thought.
Yet the regeneration and renewal of all things was underway. Would she deny it, or learn to participate with its restoring process?
-PH
