Just When You Think Flowers Can’t Bloom In Winter…. UNITE Linky

It wasn’t a choice. I needed a “beauty hunt”. It was Sunday, but even the ceiling of a church seemed too restricting.

I was suffocating…and desperately needing air.

The ice covering our windshield…Cold, frozen. My heart in a similar position, needing light to melt it after weeks of devastation.

We cross the railway, turn right, feel the basking of an open field….sun melting the ice from everything it’s touching.

How I long to crawl right from my car, build a ladder like Jacob…and climb right into the open heavens.

My face turns toward the sun, almost involuntarily. I can’t look, or talk, or even grab that happy smile that usually willingly greets anyone.

Like the road; it’s been a long, bumpy few weeks. My line of sight quickly lost, my hope slowly perishing.

The echos ring of vacant spaces deep within me. Yet, the Son coming to lavish the wide open space around me.

“Where are we going?” My school daughter echoes from the back seat.

“We don’t know.” Husband answers back, car leaning automatically towards Canada.

My face pierces the open field, eyes locked on the down-turned rays. No walls. No hindrances. Ice inside me slowly melting.

Our two-year-old wiggles in the back seat.

The dvd hasn’t been working and I absolutely dread the thought of being locked in our vehicle with our foster daughter experiencing Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome.

Yet, my choices seem hopeless. The ice keeps melting, while simultaneously, faith starts rising…from somewhere I can’t explain.

We pull into a gas station, and then unexpectedly out of the only energy that still remains…I ask my husband, “Should we put our hands on the dvd player and pray for it to work?”

As soon as I say it, I know it sounds insane. But with our gas tank full now, I know there is nothing more dangerous than a girl who has nothing to loose….

I put my hand on the dvd player, calmly and quietly, words just start filling my mouth involuntarily…

“God – Remember that winter, we had a preemie from foster care and our car’s heater hadn’t been working for months? It was cold and I was desperate, so I laid my hands on our Monterro, got in and the heater started working….not just that day, but every day afterward?

Well God, if you can do that for a heater, you can do that for a dvd player. Please God, please make it work.”

I say it flat, non-nonchalantly, without any fluctuation or energy left in me. Not even really believing anything would happen….

But then, my God…He is a God of the resurrection!

He is a God who hears the desperate cries of those who depend on Him. He is a God who cares about the little things. And if He can resurrect Lazarus…

He can resurrect a dvd play….or even you or me!

And He did. I put in a dvd, and miraculously it started working.

I turn my head back towards the sun and tears start streaming unexpectedly.

“Thank you. Thank you, God. I needed that.” I almost gasp for air, underneath my breathe. I look for tissue, but none is there.

Feeling so forsaken. And yet, the God who sees…cares for the sparrow…and unconditionally looks after me.

We drive onward. North.

A falcon with the number twenty-five sits on a telephone wire above us. My husband shares how his brother has made a half a million with those very same birds.

Birds fly over fields and guard them, stopping predators from eating up the seeds so carefully planted by the owner.

And yet, He watching over us just the same. Watching us from on high, interceeding for us always…making sure the enemy doesn’t steal our seeds of hope.

And why have I missed His beauty like this before?

And it’s as if my eyes are opened for the first time. I see more clearly…

Eagles perch high on a pole, overshadowing the sea. Seals search for food in the depths of His creation. Barren trees reaching to the heavens….trusting somehow Spring will come.

All His, all beauty, all miracles….counted a thousand times more precious than some plastic dvd player.

We weave through a windy road, alongside the bay coast. Ice on our windshield nearly gone.

I marvel at the beauty found in mountains, trees covering a rock, and yet reaching deeper, higher despite the obstacle normally crushing it…

And what if we didn’t let anything stop us. Rocks, barriers, were just objects that made us reach higher, more deeply into what eternally mattered most?

My husband navigates, like he has learned to do these past few years, so beautifully.

We run straight into a boardwalk we’ve never seen before. Grass, parks, waterfront, more beauty.

We stop. Turn off the dvd player. Get out of the car ready for a new adventure. We bundle the girls from the cold, but also take every opportunity to let the Son Himself warm us.

The world is cold. And yet, the Son is bold, shines bright, will keep reaching; wildly, louder, continually to the seekers…those weak vessels who’ll do anything to find Him.

We pray for eternal summer for our little daughters…but know winters will also find them. 

And then, I see it.

“Is that a blossom?” I race towards the pink flowers, boasting from a leafless tree.

I am warm now, the frost clearly melted from our windshield.

“I don’t know. Looks like it.” My husband unimpressively replies.

I touch them. Rub them in my fingers. Drawn to what the sun is producing…even in the dead of winter.

“They are. They are blossoms….In December.” I want to gasp, start weeping at the revelation that such beauty could grow in such a cold, hard season.

I pull out my camera. Take a picture. Feel the air return to my lungs. Finding joy, really looking now at the miracles all around us.

Our little one races across the lawn. My school-aged daughter walks along rocks, stands with arms out, and balances parallel to the ocean.

And I think about Genesis, “My Spirit hovers over the waters.” (Genesis 1:2)

I let His light now warm my spirit. Eyes peering wildly for more beauty I can capture.

And I want to be like buds in winter. The falcon, keeping the fields of my family innocent. Like an eagle, nesting with my one true love, the one it chooses; continually and forever….

I want to keep lifting my face to the Son, not letting the walls of other people’s perceptions define me with their own limitations.

Yes, the ice finally melted within. And we never made it to Canada.

But, I don’t care.

I learned from this experience….God is a God of miracles….And flowers do bloom in winter.

And that is enough for me.

UNITE LINK PARTY

Welcome to the first, 2016 Party, UNITE, Link-up!  We are expecting this year to be filled with hope, friendships, joy, and much faith rising!

Will you join our all-inclusive, no-rules blog hop?

Here is how it works…

Add a post below, link back and/or follow on Facebook and Twitter, and will you please kindly stop and comment on the post before yours?

So love having you! Thanks for joining us this week at UNITE! Happy 2016!