A New Season

Never have I been so happy to flip my wall calendar to a new month. April took a lot out of me. If you’ve read my recent blog posts, you know our family is heartbroken that the time when my dear dad needs nursing home care finally came on April 4. I have my own grief to process; but then my mom and siblings and their kids are all grieving, too, and I want to be a blessing to them. Add to the grief, all the adjustments we need to make. And now my parents live in two different places, and we’re essentially setting up a new home for Dad. Every visit, though wonderful and precious, renews our pain to see his loneliness and confusion. Now that Mom can tend to her own medical needs because the nursing home can feed and keep Dad safe, she’s lamenting how feeble she feels.

So the month of April ushered in a whole new season of life for me and my family. More accurately, the last seven years have meandered it in; this April ushered it to my doorstep, rang the bell, and handed me an engraved invitation to enter a new season of serving my family. Symbolically, in April we spent almost a whole month watching ponderous, gray balls of rain somersaulting across the sky; hearing wind chimes thrashing everyone’s porch posts, winds whining past our windows, and gusts slamming against the house; and being soaked and chilled whenever we were outside due to icy, high winds rendering umbrellas useless. 

The good news is we ate a lot of healthy soups in April, and I kept my glasses cleaner than usual because I had to polish raindrops off them so often. And in the midst of my exhaustion and wondering how I could possibly glorify God by coming alongside anyone else to bring Jesus’ love to them when my heart was in such turmoil itself ~ God led me to another engraved invitation, this one to come to Him:

Psalm 96:6 Splendor and majesty are before him; strength and glory are in his sanctuary.

Spending quiet time with my Lord went from treasure to necessity in April (not that it will stop being a treasure). Interestingly, this morning when I went to put April’s darkness behind me and move into a hopefully brighter May, I saw the May calendar page features this quotation from Saint Augustine:

Where your pleasure is, there is your treasure, there your heart; where your heart, there your happiness.