The Springtime Metaphor

I hate metaphors. I really do. This isn't, as you might suppose, because I am a creative scrooge, it is simply because writers often recycle the creativity of others, thereby cheapening the most profound and convicting of examples, and are sometimes even heralded for doing so afterward.

The metaphor of spring is one that I am particularly fond of, for I am becoming more and more acutely aware of the fact that winter erodes one's reservoirs of cheerfulness, even despite one's best efforts. My Great-aunt Winifred described March as "one of the most tiresome months of the year." Winter hasn't loosened its grip yet, and even though most of the snow is gone, there are still new storms, and cold.

Most of my ancestors were settlers, cowboys and mountain men, in the times of the Old West. Winter, for them, brought bitter cold and hunger, of which I am proud to say they thrived in. Murat Blevans, my great-great grandfather, was said to have given the shirt off his back to anyone in need, and did indeed once give his wool mittens to an old man driving a team in the middle of a snow storm. He'd go out onto the road and practically force passersby to come in and eat, even if he had barely enough for himself. I hope that will be said of me someday. The winters were marked with hardship, and spring brought life and the hope that they thought had long fled away.

And this simplest of things, spring, is synonymous with rebirth. Yesterday I walked back from class, and instead of holding my head down to keep the rain from hitting my face, I turned my face toward heaven and sang with all the angels. I rode my bike out toward Parker Road, and was reminded of just how nice it is to see the moon. The stars seemed to grab me by the throat and threaten me that I ought to tell the world of God's power and mighty love, as though I had forgotten in the long months of being under a cloud. The smell of the river pulsed through me, the dark branches of the trees overhead flew by. And I knew then that the winter was not going to last forever, and that spring was coming. 

I profess to love rain and the cold, and I do. There is something intoxicating about snow-covered mountains and oversized jackets. It makes you appreciate warmth. But spring... you don't have to hide anymore. It's glorious and wonderful and freeing. Your soul is reborn under the warmth of the Sun.

So as much as I hate overused metaphors, here goes: Springtime is like the Gospel. You see the Son face to face, and wonder what in heavens name you were doing before, being content to live in a shadow. New things are planted in your heart, and they now are free to grow. Your heart can't be cold anymore, it warms and is ready to accept new teaching and ready to be molded further by God. You can see farther, much farther into reality than you ever new existed before, because the fog is gone and the darkness has fled away.

It's always like springtime with You, making all things new,

Your light is breaking through the dark.

Your love it is sweeter than wine,

Bringing joy, bringing life.

Your hope it is rising like the dawn...

Only One Thing

I think there comes a time in a woman's life when she realizes she must give herself fully to something. I have no doubt men come to the same conclusion as well, but there is some especially dreadful feeling that fills a woman's heart when she realizes that despite all her efforts to love everything and everyone, she can only let one thing fully into that complex, beautiful heart of hers, and that one thing, whatever it may be, will slowly consume everything she has.

The more I ponder about what true love and passion are, the more I feel a deadly lack of that true emotion. We want adventure, we want wonder, we want to leave a mark after we are gone and yet, somehow, the courage and emotion and confidence required to accomplish such things we cannot find in ourselves. It's really a dreadful, empty feeling. And we realize then that whatever we decide to give ourselves to, we have to embrace it until it makes its home in our body and soul and can never leave, or the change we want will never occur.

I turn 20 in the month of May this year, and I am more than curious as to how the person I am will change over the course of the next few years, let alone the next decade. Will I remain a free spirit, wandering the lesser-travelled paths of the world, learning the nuances of the human condition? Or will I, as my grandmother puts it, "get a stable job" and live not unlike everyone else in middle class America, singing in church every Sunday but always wondering what radical things are happening in Mozambique, or Ukraine, and wonder why I am not there to witness them? I hope it is not the latter. The latter, at least, does not run in my family.

But here now, I have neglected to tell you the one thing that has started to irreversibly consume me. For some, it happens like a lightening strike, frying their bones and making them unfit for anything else. For me, it's a slow awakening, like someone who's been in a coma in a hospital bed for a long time. I only remember uselessness from my dreams, a shadow. I have learned to blink and breathe air into my lungs again. I am learning to talk. Soon I will walk, slowly, stiffly, but surely. Then I will run, jump, laugh.

Eventually, you must give yourself to something. For me, it is as much given as it is compelled from me, the only plausible option. For when you know of the only Way to love, you take it. You darn well live it. And eventually, nothing else fits in your heart, but you really don't care in the end. That is the beauty of the Divine Love of God.

I guess I started this blog to tell you about my adventures I've had and will have. I started it this way to establish that Jesus is through and in everything in my life, so naturally he's a prerequisite for all strange but lovely things that occur.

Love through me, Love of God;
Make me like thy clear air
Through which, unhindered, colors pass
As though it were not there.

Powers of the love of God
Depths of the heart Divine,
O love that faileth not, break forth,
And flood this world of Thine.

-Amy Carmichael, "If."