I am not a fan of the spring season, for a few reasons.

First, here in Minnesota, spring is sloppy. It doesn’t look like the bright, flowery, fresh springtimes depicted in storybooks or TV shows. Here, the snow is just now melting, the earth is tamped down and wet with mud abounding. Forget blooming flowers and fresh air and bright sunshine; we get dreary damp days and cold soggy nights. Our flowers don’t begin to blossom until long after much of the rest of our country, very near the start of summer. We can’t plant our gardens until well past when some of my friends have already harvested their spring lettuces. Around here we don’t plant until after Memorial Day weekend. It could still snow, you know!

Spring means my mudroom is full. Loaded up with winter parkas, raincoats, and fleece jackets. Rainboots and winter boots, tennis shoes and flip-flops. Dirt and dust are par for the course, along with hats and mittens that badly need a washing. You never know what you’ll need for the weather, so we keep it all at the ready. . . which equates to one full mudroom.

Spring also signals the transition to summer, which means heat and humidity are on their way. Not my favorite. Sure, I do enjoy some aspects of summer (swimming, tending the garden, patio dining, evening walks, and the ease of no coats necessary) but even so, it’s just not my favorite.

Despite all that I grumble about during spring, there is one thing I adore. Since we moved into our home nearly eight years ago, I’ve kept an eye on the rock beds surrounding our front lawn for the first signs of spring. And each year, my hosta burst through the ground, reaching for the sky. They take their sweet time filling out and spilling large into the beds, taking up grand amounts of space they know belongs to them.

I don’t have fancy varieties or do anything special. They were here long before we moved in. We did divide and replant some from their original spots, but that’s it. I do nothing, and every year they bring me such joy. Our house needs a repaint, so we’re really in our beige era, and the pop of bright green that the hosta provides is such a breath of fresh air after a fall and winter of brown.

And isn’t that just like the goodness and grace of God?

Goodness and grace that we do nothing to earn. That we’ve done nothing to deserve. That brightens our day and brings us joy and offers us a moment to breathe deeply, thankful.

In the icy sloppiness of spring, new life bursts through right on time, as if by clockwork. Just when I don’t think I can take one more gray day, a fresh shoot springs up through the rock. Right when I’m convinced that I won’t make it to summer, that the trees will never return to their green leafy glory. . . those hostas pop up and begin their slow unfurling.

And every year I’m surprised. Taken right aback. I never expect the good thing to happen, gaslighting myself that I’ve made it all up and this will be the year it doesn’t happen.

Oh, how He is faithful in our deep-rooted doubting.

When we doubt that His glory could be real, that His story happened, that He makes us new and whole and scrubbed clean, even the hostas declare the Truth.

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!”
2 Corinthians 5:17 NIV

“See, I will create new heavens and a new earth. . . “
Isaiah 65:17 NIV

If the hostas can be neglected and dormant for months and months, then rise up on their own at just the right time, we just might be ok too.

Hang in there. Goodness may surprise you, right there in the sloppiness.

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