Staying Changed

We came home to Spring.  All of Utah is changed.  Where there was rain and snow flurries, there are now blossom-covered trees, daffodils, tulips, and tiny green leaves.  The mountains look more magnificent than usual.  The clouds are more breathtaking.  I wonder how I could have forgotten that I live in such a beautiful place.


And then I wonder, is it me?

I have changed.  I feel different inside.  Parts of me have healed, others are now deeper, still others softer.  In three days I laughed more than I’ve laughed in a year.  I saw new things, spent time in new places, and they influenced me.  I spent time in the woods, time by the sea.  I visited people I haven’t seen in years.  I held still.  I read a book.  I took a break from the cares of my everyday life.  The world looks a little different.


As I wandered around my yard, it occurred to me that everyone around me is different too.  Like ocean waves that come and go from the same beach without pause, leaving it the same in identity and yet so different in detail, life does that to us.  I thought of these people I care about, how we’ve all collected another two weeks of stories, how we’re all still “us” but a newer version of us.  I felt a growing sense of awe and curiousity about the process, about my friends.  What a grand thing we are witnessing in our relationships, if we can see it!  I felt amazed that I am lucky enough to know them, hope that I can be the kind of friend who notices, supports, and nurtures the change in others.  Of course we all have things we would instantly dispose of, but the good?  Oh, how I want to grasp the good and somehow keep it!

I want to stay changed, just like I want to keep spring.  I’m afraid that before I know what’s happened, I’ll be back in the rut of my worries, schedules, and deadlines, and it will blind me to the wonder of it all.  I desperately want to avoid it.


Spring, more than any other time of year, reminds me to live in the moment.  We ate dinner outside on Sunday.  I set a goal spend 10 minutes of every day “on vacation.”  So far those daily minutes have been spent sitting beneath my cherry tree, admiring the blossoms, listening to the humming of the bees as they flit from flower to flower, inhaling the scent.  I’ve watched the sky through the branches, closed my eyes and breathed deeply.  I’ve read a little.  And started to dream.

It feels good.