I’m sitting on my porch this morning and the sun is so warm I’m breaking a sweat. Everything is green except for the riot of white blossoms on my flowering crab. It’s spring.
It kind of takes you by surprise. It’s been coming bit by bit for quite a while, and yet the brilliance of it hits you all at once. No more gloom of winter. It’s a new season. And we survived.
Spring is here for our family, too. When did I first notice? A week or two ago? A month? I’m sure it’s been coming on slow for a while now, and yet it seems sudden. We used to be one thing, and now we’re another. A before and after. A dying and a coming back to life.
That’s what it is. LIFE. I look around at the five of us living together in this place and we’re ALIVE. We made it and more.
Felipe smiles most of the time now. Not that posed smile like the pictures from prom but the kind that bubbles up right from the heart. We wondered if he had it in him. If he’d ever find his way out of the dark. But there it is, and I said it just this week. The real boy has begun to emerge.
David Crowder has this song.
But a certain sign of grace is this… from the broken earth flowers come up pushing through the dirt…*
The boys had an English tutor last summer, a friend of mine. She’ll likely work with them again this year. And in a text I sent her just this week I said you’ll be amazed at how much more themselves they are than a year ago.
Or two months ago.
I wonder about the change. Why this breakthrough now?
Spring doesn’t hurt. Both boys are competing on the track team. Jimmy runs and he looks legit. Lean body and endless legs and boundless energy. He could be the real deal if only he loved running like he loves soccer which I’m afraid might be just about impossible. Felipe’s the team manager and he throws the discus, and this kid who hadn’t planned to go out at all is the one who seems to have found his niche. He loves it.
We’ve also got soccer, and Nils playing baseball, and Prom, of course. And not that being crazy busy is the always the answer, but this particular combination seems to be just the ticket for now.
It’s been sixteen months and we’re repeating seasons, and this I think is helping, too. Everything now we’ve done before. It’s not so new. We know what to expect.
Crowder’s song is about grace and dirt and becoming whole and holy. And I think somewhere there just beneath the soil of these boys’ hearts there’s a miracle happening, too. Time and care and sun and patience and before you know it a riot of blooms.
*Wholly Yours by David Crowder Band
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