Coming Out of Hibernation

Kentucky seems to have finally started to thaw this spring (for good). I absolutely love this time of the year. Where we live the birds sing beautifully and you can easily watch them busily building their nests and hunting for food. The weather is neither too hot nor too cold and lots of playtime outside is in order. It's just wonderful. It makes me chuckle a bit to observe our entire neighborhood seemingly waking back up, just like the birds. Any given evening you can look out to see neighbors catching up after the long winter months and checking on each other after the many storms the spring has brought along with it. I just love it and I love this sense of community. I think it's also funny how nothing about this changes but the weather. We all live here, all the time, but throughout the winter (without specific and consistent planning) we may hardly see our neighbors at all. One of my neighbors even remarked how it was funny we hadn't seen each other all winter even though our families enjoy spending time with one another. Now that spring has come, we can be caught fellowshipping multiple nights of the week together.

Spring is a beautiful and wonderful thing. Anne Shirley of L.M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables series said she's so glad she lives in a world where there are Octobers and while I agree, I think I'm even more glad I live in a world where there is springtime.

Along with this awakening the spring brings, I think spring is also a time of birthing new ideas and the start of renewal within each of us.

I've recently been worried about some physical health-related things for myself (unfortunately I am worried like this more often than not). One day, after weeks of worrying, I was standing and doing dishes in the kitchen and looking out at our backyard. I was admiring the redbuds in bloom and the gentle movement of the pond and the swans sailing across the top ever so gracefully. All of a sudden it hit me how beautiful heaven must be. If my own backyard was this beautiful, how beautiful heaven must be!

The best part was as I looked around and had this thought, a thought popped into my head. It was a thought that we all hear people say. A thought about how there will be no pain or tears in heaven. I had never let that set in. But that day in particular, as I admired the beautiful nature of my own backyard I realized that as a Believer one day I will go to a place where I can stand, do the dishes, and look out the window (yes I truly believe there will be simple mundane tasks to do in heaven, besides some people love those things) out at the beauty God has created without a single worry or fear. No need for making doctor appointments, waiting for test results, or Googling ailments. Everything will be just as it should be and that's extremely comforting to me.

I've wrestled with heaven and what it might be like. Obviously not having the mental capacity to imagine such a thing. This year God has opened my eyes and is continually teaching me why I should be excited for what lies ahead.

You hear those corny little sayings like "Heaven is a Kentucky sort of place". Honestly, I am starting to believe that. Kentucky in the springtime is some of God's finest handiwork and if it's this beautiful earthside, imagine what is awaiting us.

Until next time.