Thaw

The thaw has been coming fast and early this year.

The land is new and wild.  It is waking up, new earth and secrets revealed.

Everywhere is the sound of water, as the snow melts away and the earth breathes once more.

I wasn’t quite ready for it yet.

I had given myself the winter, the long, long, winter, where the snow quietly covers everything in a deep, white blanket.  Everything rests.  Everything sleeps.  Part of me slept, too.

In my heart, I knew that when spring came, I needed to wake up again, too, and breathe and grow again.

When I began to hear the familiar drip of the water and smell the new, wild smell of the earth, I didn’t feel ready.

It takes faith to walk through the door of rebirth, and to keep walking through it day after day.

There is a holy light around a newly born babe, of newly sprouted plants in the spring, of new baby songbirds in a nest…a divine assurance that this new birth is right and sacred.

There is travail with the birth of a new heart, as well, but the same, quiet light shows through.

My comfort would prefer
For me to be numb
And avoid the impending birth
Of who I was born to become

Speak to me in the light of the dawn
Mercy comes with the morning
I will sigh and with all creation groan
As I wait for hope to come for me

– Brooke Fraser