Seasons. It always comes back to seasons. Waiting anxiously for one to come and another to go, enjoying the beauty of some and hating the harshness of others.
And just like nature, we grow in season. Even when we feel like we're shrinking or dying...we're growing. Rupi Kaur's latest book of poems, The Sun and Her Flowers, is a beautiful testament to what seasons of human life truly look like.
I've been in a season of doubt. A season of dried up creativity, of looking around and seeing everyone else blooming while all my petals fall to the floor. It's been a disheartening season.
But just like the sun and her flowers, we grow from our own wilting. When we shrink inward, it creates more space for beauty and strength to pour back in. Like the ground in the winter, our capacity to grow and create becomes stalled. But it's not forever. The thing about seasons is that they always come...and they always go. There is no such thing as an eternal winter or summer.
This is the first photo ever taken of my tattoo, gotten almost 6 years ago when I first moved to California, another very difficult season of doubt and confusion. This, however, is not my quote. C.S. Lewis is to thank for this pearl of wisdom. And when it comes to seasons, this is so true. Even in the best of times, better things are yet to come. And in the darkness of winter, new hope grows beneath the surface.
There is so much power in being able to recognize that we are not evergreen. Like nature sheds its skin, its petals, its leaves, we must let go of our expectations, our attachment, our obsession with perfection in order to grow.
And, in God's perfectly created irony and miraculousness, that is in fact how we grow.
Only and always through seasons.
So whether you are blooming into spring or in your own version of winter, it will pass. And you will keep on growing, and growing, and growing, through it all.