Spring has come again

I wouldn’t know it by the snow on the ground but Spring is coming. I remember the mornings my brother Steve and I would get up and hit the golf course early. It was a relaxing and fun time with more sorrow than joy (!) but I’ll never forget those mornings. The smells, sounds, sights – how the fresh cut grass stuck to our shoes as we strolled the fairway or the balls we would launch toward Russell Station (the power plant that was in easy driving distance from the middle of the fairway on the (then) 8^th hole) with a swift crack and dodge behind a tree so no one would see us. All of these feelings brought back to me every Spring. There are also the feelings of emptiness and loneliness that seemed to dog me as well in those days. How I would drive by and see an attractive girl and wonder why no one was attracted to me. How I would walk the lonely streets at night for my heart to leap out of my chest and live in a world so familiar to it. How I would pine for the phone to ring and, for once, have it be for me. Those memories come back too is this joy-filled dreadful time.

The crocus were closed today because the cold came last night. And isn’t that Spring in this fallen world? The colors push through the clay and rock to open up to the heavens and the ice comes once more…maybe twice. They close and shrink close to the ground for warmth. The Sun will reign and the flowers will never fade. In the Endless Summer of Youth I will chase glorious colors I have never seen far into a sweeping field of fresh grass that will never be cut. And all my longings will be swallowed up when I fall laughing, again and again, into the arms of the One who loves me and has always loved me.