Sitting here at the kitchen table looking out over the lake while I am working on various writing projects, I find my eyes lifting upward to watch the fascinating retreat of the frozen surface. A thin sheen of ice remains...a little thicker in some places...and once again the ripples of water are visible and transfixing. This kaleidoscopic view is almost hypnotic, and it feels like the return of an old friend missing since late fall.
The process of the spring thaw is reminiscent of our own lives. In some seasons we are still, frigid, and unmoving outwardly, just like the winter surface of this enormous body of water. But this is just what is visible. We all know that beneath that thick layer of January ice there is all kinds of activity going on! Life is still happening, as our ice fisherman so excitedly illustrate when dropping a line through that augered out hole.
Throughout our own personal emotional "winters", we also have an awful lot going on beneath the appearance of stagnation and stillness in our own lives. These are the times when there is a gentle thawing and refreezing of ideas and perspectives, times when outwardly we are at rest but inwardly there is new growth stirring. Inevitably, we emerge from these periods of life with a sense of being renewed, and energy that has been stored up is anxious to be put to good use.
We may be frustrated with these seasons of our lives and feel like nothing important will come from them. We sometimes feel stalled, passive, and lacking in "umph". But if we are patient, great things come from these times of physical slowdown, and it can be fertile ground for us in ways that, in the moment, we can't really understand but later we reflect and realize how it gave us time to mature, create, and let the whisper of an idea or concept solidify.
Don't worry when you are in these periods, you are not walking through them alone. God is working within to create something fresh and very, very alive in you! And when "The Big Thaw" arrives, you just might be delighted by what you discover was at work when you assumed you were really at rest.
In Love and Light,
Rev. Cindy
