At long last… Spring! Our family has so longed for these brighter days and all the things that come along with them. Yesterday, I picked up our daughter from school and before she got her seatbelt buckled, she said, “This weather just makes me so… happy!” I agreed. Spring can feel so revitalizing after such a dormant winter. After we have experienced a few weeks of spring, we almost forget the drudgery of the winter we were just in. We are just so happy to live in a new season. I’ve been thinking about how life is like that in a lot of ways, too.
Our family just had our first litter of piglets born on the farm. While we have had our fair share of baby animals, we’ve never had any of them born and raised from infancy. We have learned so much thus far about their farrow process and after-care management, but what we can’t get over is how quickly the piglets grow and develop. They almost double in size every other day and we are left speechless witnessing their transient change. In a few more weeks, they will be big enough to leave our farm and start a new journey somewhere else. Our season with them will be over and we will be left with the memories and lessons of their seemingly short time here.
In the same way, our children will one day leave and blaze their own trail. What we will be left with are the memories and the lessons of our raising. What they will be left with will be hearts and minds, disciplines and boundaries, shaped by our shepherding. Life is brief, and seasons are so very temporary. Just as winter turns to spring, just as every moon wanes, just as piglets double in size; everything changes in time. We will likely forget all the details of every season, and most certainly, we will forget the harshness of the seasons we hated. If you are a parent in the trenches of a season you are struggling with, take heart. Like spring coming after a frigid, cold and dark winter, good things come! We do feel happy again. Life will get warmer.
“No matter how long the winter, spring is sure to follow.” -Proverb
-by Destini McPherson
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