New Spring- New Life

The beginning of each season is always special.

When autumn arrives I ooh and ahh over the changing leaf colors and glory in the purchasing of school supplies.

When the first snowflakes begin to tumble from the sky, I pull out my warm gloves and scarves, crank up the heat, and sip from steaming mugs of hot cocoa.

By mid-season I am always ready for something new. No matter how mighty the snow storms, February can’t go by fast enough. And despite the yummy foods of harvest and autumn holidays, I always look forward to the novelty of winter.

The Bible and the Byrds were right- to everything there is a season!

 

Now it is time to revel in Spring. I love Spring. I love it for many reasons:

• the rain - spring rain is better than autumn rain. That is all.
• the first flowers- tulips, daffodils, and crocuses seem to pop up out of no where and wave their happy little heads around in the breeze
• the sun - where did you disappear to, O Happy Face? Welcome back!!

For any of you out there who missed it- today was a glorious day!

I got sunburnt while weeding, cleaning, and pruning my yard. It felt good to yank those big ‘ol weeds right out of the ground and then stand back and see the job completed.  (Ha, that’s not quite how it went down but it sounds better this way- so glad that Jake was home to lend muscles to my weakness!)

And as I stood, leaning on my rake, watching Jacob mow the lawn, I had a moment of great appreciation for all things spring and all things good.

In fact, I was reminded of my second favorite chapter in my number one favorite book.

The grass whispered under his body. He put his arm down, feeling the sheath of fuzz on it, and, far away, below, his toes creaking in his shoes. The wind sighed over his shelled ears. The world slipped bright over the glassy round of his eyeballs like images sparkled in a crystal sphere. Flowers were suns and fiery spots of sky strewn through the woodland. Birds flickered like skipped stones across the vast inverted pond of heaven. His breath raked over his teeth, going in ice, coming out fire. Insects shocked the air with electric clearness. Ten thousand individual hairs grew a millionth of an inch on his head. He heard the twin hearts beating in each ear, the third heart beating in his throat, the two hearts throbbing his wrists, the real heart pounding his chest. The million pores on his body opened.

I’m really alive! he thought. I never knew it before, or if I did I don’t remember.

 Dandelion Wine, Ray Bradbury c 1946

There is something about the combination of the heat of the sun, the smell of the composting earth, the sight of the baby leaves, the feel of the smooth grass, and the taste of salty sweat that always reminds me of how lucky I am to be alive! 

Have you ever had a moment like that? A moment where you suddenly realized what it meant to be alive?  Really alive?! When, like Douglas Spaulding, you want to “…feel all there is to feel” ?

Life IS Fair

I've had some thoughts floating around unorganized in my mind for a few weeks. I would like to try to express them now since there were several talks at General Conference that seemed to support my budding ideas.
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I am tired of the phrase "life is not fair". People say this to me ALL THE TIME. It is their answer to that often asked question “Why me?”. Lately I have watched several of my friends go through trials of their own. My first instinct was to tell them that life is not fair. I was sure that this would immediately solve all their problems. But it hasn’t solved mine, and I know it won’t solve theirs either.

Here is my own personal opinion. Life is perfectly fair. We may not get what we want, but not getting our own way is not the same thing as being “not fair”. Plus, Fate doesn't discriminate and only give problems to some people. Every single person on earth has problems in their life. Please email me immediately if you haven’t suffered from at least one of the following afflictions: stress, not enough money, a disability, divorce, miscarriage, infertility, job loss, death of a family member, sickness, depression, abuse, addiction, loneliness, heartbreak or troublesome family member. I am sure that at some point in our lives we all ask the question, “Why me?”.

Do you know what would be really unfair? If someone managed to get all the way through life without suffering any of these sad things-that would be unfair. Imagine going through life never attending a funeral? (It won't happen). Imagine never catching a flu bug, or disagreeing with a sibling, worrying about a loved one, or having to look for a new job?

Luckily, we are each only given the trials that we are strong enough to handle. Christ’s atonement has covered all of our heartbreaks; He suffered our pains in the Garden of Gethsemane and He knows. He knows that in our own way we will each have to suffer, but one’s suffering is not looked upon as greater or lesser than someone else’s. To Him, it is the same. And so it must be for us as well. We can not look at others and wonder why they are so much luckier than we are because we don’t know what they suffer or how it hurts them. Only Christ can know their hearts.

During the General Conference of the LDS church this weekend, at least half the speakers seemed to comment on this topic. Here are links to two of them which are my personal favorites:

President Henry B. Eyring

Elder Ronald A. Rasband

So here is my challenge to myself. I am going to try to stop asking that “Why me?” question. I have a lot of good things going for me (good family, good husband, good job)-it wouldn't be fair to not have a few problems too.

There is a poem that I use during my poetry unit every year that comes to mind. So, to close with a quote from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s The Rainy Day:

Be still, sad heart! and cease repining;

Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;

thy fate is the common fate of all,

Into each life some rain must fall,

Some days must be dark and dreary.