I didn’t quit before the miracle

OMG!! I think it is here!

Springtime looks to have truly come for me and New Horizons’ Harpers Ferry Retreat Center.

I listen carefully to the birds chirping back and forth outside my open bedroom windows, gaze at the trees, now bushy and freshly green with new growth.

I am all of these. They are me.

My lilies and I,both,
made it through the
"endless winter."

The earth is very alive and so am I!

The standstill--ness of what seemed to be chilly days without end, where I saw little evidence of my life being in motion, beyond mere survival, appear to be passing away.

Accepting my powerlessness to do anything more than submit, surrender, even sacrifice every long held dream I ever had, obstacles seemingly blocking each hard won step I took, try as I might to surmount them.

Faith seemed to be all I had, a belief in visions, held firm in my mind, praying determinedly they would not melt into the Disney-like adventures that once filled my adolescent days.  Rather that I, like the words suggested in the“Rose,” could be the seed that lying “far beneath winter’s snow would, in the springtime, become the rose.”

Now, I SEE evidence all around me that truly my springtime has come,.

People, especially my loyal, hardworking volunteer sisterhood of Leslie and Sue; so much the providers of the substantiation, the builders of concrete proof of the resurrection of me, fully alive, once more, on this land. Painters of cheerful new walls, cheery with color, landscaping outdoors, guiders of our unfolding progress toward the realizing of dreams. New Horizons Retreat Center, active again.

Can this all be true, unfolding before my eyes?

Yum. Makes my heart sing, my eyes pop with wonder at the sight!

Yesterday as Chris, our handyman, and I paused for a break, working together to re-energize this land, a five or six foot black snake showed up, displaying its sleek, shiny self. I thought it a symbol of my need to shed and release the old skin – fear -- that has encased me these many past winters. And, to remember that beyond my ordinary sight I have, all these many years of stillness, been protected by unseen entities; some on ground level, others quite beyond. A black snake, thus, need not be scary. It has its job as I have mine.

Time to let go of the old and let in the springtime. OMG!