Chris and I are expecting our firstborn child. It is a bit surreal to be at this point, 6 and half months in, the end drawing nearer. With springtime upon us, new life springing up all around and the celebration of our resurrected Lord, I have been thinking a bit about the changing of seasons and their symbolism for so much of life. God has often reminded me of how He works, of His grace and His faithfulness through the experience of and picture of autumn, winter, spring and summer. When I found out our daughter was due on the first day of summer I felt like God was using the seasons to help me see some of His truth again.
You see, this baby was conceived in the autumn. After a season of heartache and loss, here was a little gift, a hopeful promise of things to come. We had just had a miscarriage and through the pain and the grief we trusted that God would not let it go to waste, that He could transform it all, bringing beautiful life out of a season of death. You see, we’ve lived a few autumns’ before- seasons of confusion and difficulty- when it seemed like everything was going wrong, against our plan, and we were surrounded in destruction and death- but we’ve always come through them. Cause the thing about seasons is that they never last- autumn freezes, winter melts, spring blooms into glorious summer and it all dies again. We were hopeful as we found ourselves in the middle of another difficult autumn because we had seen God work through every single previous season we’d faced, and we are confident that death is not the end of any story. So we hoped through the sadness, trusted despite the pain, and found ourselves pregnant again a few months later.
Winter was a time of waiting, hoping, looking for signs, with only just a few to be found. The outline of a little person on an ultrasound, the rhythmic sound of a beating heart, the weariness and nausea that all indicate things are going well. These things and the joy of telling others brought us a little warmth as we waited through the winter.
Springtime started the moment we saw her again on the ultrasound, squirmy and round, little hands waving, hiccupping chest, and all her vital organs, including the ones that let us know she was a ‘she’. The reality hit us as we began thinking of her as a little girl, a little person, with an identity and tiny toes and fingers- and it began to really sink in that next week when I felt her move for the first time.
Right now she feels like springtime, rounding my belly, little kicks, her rhythmic hiccups- the feelings of new life, signs of how much she’s grown through this winter. When I found out she was due on the first day of summer I was reminded again of God’s faithfulness through the seasons, of how He brings about His good in His time, and His amazing plan to bring new life out of death. He demonstrated this most powerfully through the death and resurrection of His Son, and by reproducing His resurrection life in us.
Happy Easter, and Happy Springtime- and may you trust Him whether you find yourself in a springtime season or maybe an autumn- praise Him for the good, trust Him in the difficult. We have to savor the fragrance of spring and the warmth of summer, because they don’t last either- just as we trust Him through death and the lifeless and cold seasons we weather. They pass too, and He uses each season for the next.
The Mainlands 