It’s 30’s and clouds and more than one snowflake in the 10-day forecast, and it’s this kind of spring testing the loyalty of true Minnesotans. Not to mention those of Colombian blood, boys already inclined to ask– Why here and not Florida if you have the choice? Last spring and the one before mild and early and we warned them. This isn’t normal. But now this year it’s nothing but normal and all we can do is wait it out.
I don’t know if it’s the weather or something bigger, but it does feel a bit like we’ve pressed pause on life and everything lately has seemed to be WAIT. Waiting for the job to start back up for a 19-year-old who’s back from his travel and has nothing to do but lay on the couch playing video games. And it’s not really his fault, since spring-cleaning depends on spring weather, and yet.
I’m waiting, too. Waiting for some word from some publisher. Some word from the Spirit, too, and I’m trying to be patient, but it feels like forever.
I woke one morning earlier this week thinking about too many snacks eaten before bed. They were lingering still. And I’m not sure how this thought came to mind, but there in the dark, snuggled still under so many blankets I thought of Jesus, forty days fasting. Forty days, the length of Lent and my own lame attempt at giving up indulgence and how’s that going? You can probably guess.
Moments later I sat with coffee reading the Exodus story when again it hit me. Forty days the people waited for Moses on the mountain. We don’t know what has happened to him – so they made themselves an idol, just to be safe. And I’ve always thought how short a time was that wilderness waiting, but I’m seeing it now. Waiting for spring and waiting for Easter, and forty days is just short of forever.
It’s all perspective, and I know in my head these things take time. Monday evening we’re at Caribou Coffee with FANA families. Colombian teens and adoptive parents, and my own boys steal the show with their polished English and happy spirits. I can see on the faces of the first-year families, grueling days of sheer survival, and they’d take what we’ve got as a gift from Heaven. Of course, I’ll admit it. It’s worth the waiting.
I remind myself, and Kyle, too, as we lay weary in bed just last night. A whole evening spent with a surly teen – the same kid who stole the show on Monday, and stole it again with his prom ask on Thursday, and all seemed peachy until it wasn’t. Sometimes teens are like Minnesota weather, and all you can do is wait it out.
Today is Good Friday, and I think about how those days of grieving felt like forever to the friends of Jesus. No way of knowing, even though He’d told them and they should have believed Him. Only three days. Three short days to change forever.
Three days or three years and you look back with perspective seeing ALL He’s been doing. Life resurrecting and spring returning and it’s just like He told us. Worth the wait.
For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God. Romans 8:19-21