Five Minute Friday :: Finally

• Five Minute Friday :: Finally Linkup

Winter bare trees
Will turn spring green
Tides return to the lone bare shore
Cocoons give butterflies
For tomorrow

Do I believe all that? Do I trust any of it?

We often apply terminology related to God's natural creation to our own lives, to our journeys in faith. Both consist of diverses elements; both of them ebb and flow, apparently decline and suddenly grow. Just as for too many people, it's been a very long haul for me. Excuses? Reasons? The Great Recession (financial, banking, insurance, mortgage, economic, etc. crisis) of 2008 and thereabouts helped not at all; internet growth caused negative growth for jobs that didn't require in-house presence and supervision—thus the design opps I'd been getting via a temp agency evaporated, and though it's been fun to have clients from everywhere through crowd sourcing websites, "it's not the same" and it's relatively slim pickings. And, of course, Covid.

Like the rest of humanity, I pretty much always knew life literally can hold onto stinging disappointments and losses. "Hold onto" has become the operative phrase for those of us who know nature abhors a vacuum (modern science says Aristotle was wrong, but for blogging purposes let's call him right), and we usually need something reasonably to replace whatever we've lost before we truly can acknowledge it's gone and then finally let go. Let go as in aphesis, or forgive the past.

Like you, I'm still it all for the long haul, yet as spring leaves deepen toward hints of summer, it looks as if I have a couple of guest preaching gigs in June. They emailed me the compensation/honorarium amount and needed my street address for calculating mileage, so doesn't that look good to go? And I'm designing a preliminary flyer I trust will solicit participants so I can get funding for some recreational art classes through a ministry and mission initiative one of the very large churches in the area is offering.

Am I saying winter branches are greening and tides finally are signaling another day? Maybe.

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