Spring

  

As I sit tucked in a rattan chair with a computer in my lap, the gentle touch of spring billows around me. I count the days until Sunday. 4. Joanie’s due date, March 25^th.

 I fight back the tears pressing into this new reality. The winter chill has melted. The blossoms are beginning to bud. The maple leaves adorn the once barren branches of Chantry Flats. 

I begin to dream a new dream. Where she and I grow wildly more beautiful and free into our identity as daughters of the King. Where she and I embrace all we have been made for, distance galaxies apart.

I cry out of this joyous motherly home where all I can do is see her smiling with her Father God. She is so happy. And this is all I see and all I know of her, joy.

Yesterday we descended down into the forest floor of Chantry Flats anticipating the maple and oak tree planted in winter for Joanie. Our lungs filling up with the new smells and sights of spring. Indian paintbrush. Baby blue-eyes. Rock rose. Rays of sunlight shimmering off infant maple leaves. Ferns cascading into the meandering creek. Tiny blossoms wrapped in time. Anticipating the warmth of spring.

It was as though this world I had walked through 3 months ago, had opened up before me into a new undiscovered place. The forest floor had been transformed by the gentle touch of spring.

Smiling from cheek to cheek this changing season giving way to new beauty, paralleling the new song in my heart. The words of the prophet Isaiah continued to sing over me. Remember not the former things nor consider the things of old. Behold I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth do you not perceive it? I will make a may in the wilderness and rivers in the desert (Isaiah 43:11).

What was lying dormant from winter was now bursting with spring. It was springing forth something new. And Father God had made a way for me. He had straightened the path before me and girded my feet to walk. No longer was I bound by fear, sorrow, and disappointment. I had been set free.

All I knew in those 3 hours of revisiting the place of broken dreams, bleeding hearts, and empty hands was how God makes all things new.

As we began to scale the cliff to search for the oak tree, we did not know what to expect. Would the harshness of winter and the eroded mountainside leave the ground barren like my womb? Or would we discover a deep rooting and more growth since winter?

Nothing had encroached upon the tree, not even the sea of

weeds aggressively taking over the mountainside. It was as though it had been protected and raised up from all the rest. I knew the Lord was protecting us and protecting her. And not only did we have His blessing of protection, but He had raised us up like a child whose parent places them on their shoulders to get the best view.  

The Lord had raised me above my circumstances to see beyond the pain and suffering into His heart of love, adoration, and good plans for my life. I knew Joanie had this type of seat in heaven. Direct access to the Fathers heart.

Michael rested the wildflowers upon the soil. Covering its roots where Joanie’s ashes once laid, pink, orange, blue, and red petals. Telling of a greater story then the one Satan had intended. For we are, crowned with beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair (Isaiah 61:3).

Spring would begin this new song of our hearts as we joined Joanie in this dance where redemption meets royalty.

As I began crying new tears of joy and no longer sorrow, a yellow butterfly soared directly in eyes view, over our heads, above Joanie’s oak tree and into the forest. The moment was so fragile it would have escaped us if we had not been positioned right.

But this butterfly meant so much more to me that day than the countless childhood memories of chasing butterflies in the garden.

Today it was a confirmation and testimony of Father God’s goodness. Less then a week ago a young man from Belgium I had never met shared an image God had given him. He saw a butterfly full of beauty and freedom.

I was this butterfly.

And so was Joanie.