It’s been a fairly warm and mild winter this year. We’ve definitely had more sunshine then snow. But this morning brought seamless grey clouds and a road scantily clad in black ice.
The trees have been dead for awhile now.
And parts of me have been feeling dead too.
But this morning I smiled because there in the middle of the dark cold asphalt lay a dried up piece of wild grass looking absolutely stunning. Not because of the grass itself but because of the frost that had formed around it.
Something about beauty in the parking lot let me breathe.
Like maybe all these crazy broken parts inside me will be okay. Like maybe those parts of my soul that have been ripped out of the ground and left to whither can be covered by the frost of love and still made beautiful.
I get so stuck on the DIRT in my life and I forget that my God is the one who made LIFE from dirt…but I have to be willing to let God’s breathe pour into my dirt if I want to see life here.
If I want to see dead branches grow again.
That grass also reminded me that even when we aren’t strong enough to be growing and thriving at our best, when we are just withered plants in a parking lot, He still cares and there is still grace and there is still beauty in this quiet, dead, in-between kind of place. This winter before the spring. This season where everything feels so silent and quiet, this season of waiting.
But waiting doesn’t mean wallowing.
And dormant doesn’t mean dead.
As we step into this new month of February may our hearts be warmed by love and our faces lit by laughter. May we find specks of God in the everyday things and may we remember that our God can breathe life and beauty into even the most dead and dismal spaces.
