Spring Forth!

​It’s been a little strange returning from California to Minnesota for one reason.  In California it was full on spring…. Flowers blooming, wild iris sprouting, the grass was greener that I saw it in all the 20 years I lived there, the birds and the bees procreating, the rain and sun dancing in turn.  Returning home I was greeted with a very different sight.  The several feet of snow I had left behind as I headed to California had almost disappeared, leaving brown grass, remains of brown fallen leaves from the fall, and no buds or signs of spring anywhere.  The luscious green I had been soaking in was nowhere evident.  The leaves are still held tight within their buds on tree branches, no opening in sight.  The new life that had been abundantly apparent was absent.  The only similarity was the squishing mud puddles beneath my feet.
 
So walking in the woods with Gibbs this week has been kind of disorienting.  My body is screaming spring.  My eyes are used to color again.  But my present senses are not seeing this as reality.

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​Unless I look really closely.  For there are small signs of spring coming up.  A green leaf pushing up through the brown leaves.  A tree bud swelling.  Mist rising from the thawing ponds.  Smells released from their frozen state.  Birds singing, Sandhill Cranes strutting, geese returning.
 
These small signs offer hope, yet you have to pay attention to catch them.  They are easy to miss.  Easy to ignore.  Easy to step on.  But, if you look closely, they are present.  Spring just waiting in the background, readying itself for a grand entrance!
 
I think this is a reflection of our healing.  Small glimpses that are easily overlooked appear, building one upon another, until we suddenly catch sight of a step in our healing process that we had been blind to before. 
 
For example, I was in California for a training in Eco-Therapy.  A way of being in nature as a reflection of healing work. (more about this later!!)  I was a little concerned that doing this course would open up some old wounds, or show me places where I was still ‘broken’, but the opposite was true.  As the days went on, I realized that the small signs of healing I had been seeing over the past couple of years have exploded into a recognizable sign of healing bursting through.  Some old triggers were no longer activated.  Some old wounds were no longer sore.  The small glimpses of healing I had seen grew into a whole spring of it, and I was able to bear witness to how far I had come and bloomed and was now full of new life.  It was beautiful to feel this deep in my bones.  

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​So, wherever you are, look for the signs.  The small buds swelling, the flowers pushing up out of the earth, the signs that something that had been hard for you is now a little easier.  And consider how much new life there is in your life.  How much you have changed and grown.  And if you don’t yet feel it, search for those small, small signs of life that can give you a glimpse of what is waiting to be born.

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