Pleasant pause…

If we had no winter, the Spring would not be so pleasant: if we did not sometimes face adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome.
~ Anne Broadstreet

We spent all the day outside…a spring day. Beautiful and warm, green and fragrant. Everything a spring day should be. I laid on the blanket, watching the children play as the breeze played with my hair. David nuzzled in close, nursing contentedly. I gazed up at the distant hills and the royal blue sky and I couldn't help but smile- my heart ached with the glory of creation.  A Psalm echoed in my head: "The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places: indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance." (16:6) I know this is true. I have watched my mourning turned to gladness…

I heard the washer buzz through the open window, and I suddenly was called back into my every day reality. Some days, a comic joked, reality is all too real. I swear I groaned at that sound. Because that sound meant folding. And ironing. And carrying up the stairs. And putting away. Only to do it all another day. "I would much rather stay out here", I argued with myself. (And a bit with God, if I was honest.) "Why can't there be more days like this?" I questioned. And it came as a whisper, the answer: "Because then you could not appreciate the rareness, the beauty, of this day, if it became the 'everyday'." How true this is! I treasure life now because of the crazy year of ups and downs, twists and turns, life lost, life gained- I would not know the treasure of today because I assumed that there were many more todays ahead…yet we are but vapor resting on the mountains before the morning sunrise.

It is so hard to remember this. I find myself grieving over lost opportunities in my life this last year because I was so distracted by 'every day reality' without proper focus. Things and people got ahead of my walk with God, my husband, and my family because I wasn't keeping to the plumb line of the Master. And everything came out crooked, as it is wont to do. But He is the Master Craftsman, is He not? He will make the crooked straight and the rough smooth. (Isaiah 40:3-5) This gives me great comfort; all is not lost. It may seem that way for a moment. Surely, winter seems to last for an eternity- it appears as if all will be cold, all will be desolate, and nothing will ever live again. And then spring. Spring pushes up through the snow and ice and furls its leaves with joyful abandon, in a riotous testimony to the faithfulness of God!

So I pause. In between the glimpse of heaven and the quotidian everyday, I remember that He is here now in these showers of blessings, just as He was in the tempests of troubles. Because He was, and Is, and Is to come. And will Be, forevermore.