Hello Reader. I hope this love letter finds you basking in spring's lambent warmth and exuberant laughter. But if you're wrestling in a period of muddy waiting, while challenging downpours are preparing the soil of your heart for new growth, may you find a grain or two of encouragement to hold you as you push through the mud and reach for God's Light and Love.

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Mud Season—After the Wintering

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God’s wisdom is something mysterious that goes deep into the interior of his purposes. You don’t find it lying around on the surface. It’s not the latest message, but more like the oldest—what God determined as the way to bring out his best in us, long before we ever arrived on the scene. 1 Corinthians 2:7 MSG (emphasis mine)

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Mud season.

Boot-sticking, pants-splotching mud, turning our landscape into a sloppy mess. The tangible tug of spring bursting at the seams with anticipation only to be put on hold as winter’s last blast melts into spring's incessant downpours and dampens the exuberance. Spring's colors, hidden in the kernels of seeds and bulbs, hunker down under the mud a bit longer, waiting...

Mysterious beauty lives in the deep, dark soil of our hearts, wrapped in a tight protective kernel—a tiny kernel, placed so lovingly, so precisely within us long before our first breath. But with the clamor and chaos of the world, we may have to pass through our own wintering before we are still enough to find it.

Wintering of the soul is a lonely season. A time of resting in darkness. When life is heavy and hard to take, Jeremiah tells us to bow our head in prayer and wait for hope to appear. (Lamentations 3:28-32)

In our wintering season, we feel distant from God—as far as the east is from the west. Though we feel helpless, we wait and hope. We wait until we are ready to cry out like David, How long, LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? (Psalm 13:1)

Even in his darkest moments, David's hope was active. He turned away from his sorrow to seek God's face, knowing God never leaves us. But I trust in your unfailing love. (Psalm 13:5) Hope kindles us and keeps us warm while we wait. Even the tiniest sliver can hold us in our waiting.

We wait. We hope. We do our best to press on and know the Lord. His coming is as certain as the morning sun; he will refresh us like rain renewing the earth in the springtime. (Hosea 6:3 CEV)

After the darkness of soul wintering, God breathes new life and stirs the kernel of beauty within—an awakening to coax us out of the darkness. Just as the wrestling of spring from winter's hold creates a muddy April, so too does our awakening wrestle with the tight grip of our lingering doubts. Yet, we continue to reach through the sloppy mud season toward God's Light and Love.

We take heart, trusting that Hope holds us in our wintering, encourages us in our awakening, strengthens us in our wrestling. And as surely as green April sprouts poke through the mud and bloom into gorgeous tulips, the beauty God planted within us, for his purpose, will grow and bloom beauty into the world.

Today I share an entry from my journal, written awhile back when I needed to plant seeds of hope in my own mud season.

After the wintering

Broken isn't the end, but the beginning—the opening of a deeper self to emerge and bloom. When life is heavy and hard to take, be still and wait for hope to appear. Hope rooted in Love.

Hope.

As surely as the warm dawn glistens through the lingering raindrops after of a violent, stormy night, hope will appear.

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Poetry Garden

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Posts to Share

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This is one of six slides posted yesterday on @aimeeselah_poetrygarden. If you haven't connected with me on Instagram yet, click here.

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Here's a sneak preview of next week's Wednesday post:

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Today’s love letter is a prelude to the next message where we'll explore the transformation of a New Testament woman after her unexpected encounter with the Way, the Truth and the Life. He met her gaze, spoke to her with dignity and grace, helping her break through the hardened shell that she had wrapped around her heart, cracking all barriers to allow Love to shine into her core and coax the tendril of her True self out into the open to bloom and to shine the beauty of Hope into the world.

Until next time, when the the poem of the day explores how we would answer this question: If I were to find you sitting at the well…

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p.s.

Awakening from the mud season is a theme of the novel I am currently working on. Keep your eye out (especially on Instagram) for details!

p.p.s.

I hope you are enjoying a new format and day change I am experimenting with. First, I'm posting my love letters on Saturday morning, a day where you may have more time to read. Second, I am changing formats: one letter imbued with a nature theme and the other based on a Biblical theme and a breathing practice. Both formats with a poem.

Two letters and one podcast a month.

Reply to this message to let me know if you like the changes or, even better, to share your own poem or thoughts inspired by these letters, as you journey with me.

Thank you!

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