The official start of spring is just around the corner: March 20th marks the beginning.

With that, many people REALLY start to think about the garden or their pending yard work. This year in Memphis, we’ve gotten a big head start on springtime weather, with such a warm winter and some really warm early days, the plants have woken up extra early. Our own yard has been no different: The cherry tree and dogwood, usually in bloom at the very end of March, began blooming a few weeks ago. The azaleas, undeterred by the cold winter conditions we had, are blooming though they’ve lost most of their leaves!

When you’ve been gardening in one space for any amount of time, having lived through several years’ worth of seasons, you begin to mark time by the blooming and arrival of springtime plants. The flowering trees and shrubs in our yard have been constant markers for me since we’ve been on Rosehaven, but this year, the timing is throwing me off. It’s still quite early, and, as we had this last week, frost and a hard freeze is still a real possibility.

A few years ago, my mantra for the year from the Lord was to live in step with the season. Those words were something I clung to as I made some big life decisions: quitting my job at SCS, starting a new venture and getting my hands dirty at a much more hands-on, physical job than I’d had for quite some time. That year had other unexpected changes, too…the light finally dawned on Micah, and a month and a half later, we were married! The seasons were wildly-shifting and changing much faster than I knew they could or dreamed they would!

Just as our springtime (and let’s be real, a lot of our Memphis weather) has been a bit chaotic and unexpected, I think our life seasons can be equally topsy-turvy. Maybe all the things you were waiting for happen did, but much earlier or later. Maybe the order you thought life would take isn’t how it’s worked out, and you’re reconciling yourself to what is in place of what you thought would be.

I’ve had a bit of that myself this spring. I’d always pictured myself having two children, I suppose because I’m one of two and really love my family-of-origin. After learning a bit more about what happened during and after Danny’s birth, though, I think it’s likely that we’ll be an only-child family. That’s not at all bad, it’s just not what I ever pictured for our family life. A change in the season: A shorter length of the baby years for our family, one fewer place setting than I thought we’d have at our big table.

When the seasons of life leaving us feeling a bit uncertain or when unfamiliar territory, wilderness, seems all around us, I hope we reach for the One who walks beside us. I hope we turn in dependence toward the love that is constant in the midst of bewilderment.

May we have the grace to mark the seasons, not as we wish they were, but as they actually are. When the trees bloom early and the late freezes come, may we have the sense to turn ourselves toward Jesus in the midst of wilderness ground, finding that it, too, is holy.