A Woman in the Spring ...

Marjorie Holmes is one of my favorite inspirational writers. Her heartfelt and moving "conversations with God" touch on everyday life on subjects we all experience at one time or another. Today, I'd like to share her bittersweet reflections on Spring from her book Love and Laughter ...

"A Woman in the Spring"

A woman's moods are subject to the changing seasons. Women especially relate in some mysterious fashion to the burgeoning earth in spring.

The heart is stirred within us at the scent of growing things. The pulse responds. Subtly, deep in our beings, we feel that a secret is about to be revealed. Some core of truth that only a woman could fathom, some mystery akin to all creation.

And a woman feels a restlessness, a giddy, inexplicable aching in the spring. Old hopes rise from a long, long sleeping.

(And) for a little while, watching the buds break ...

Hearing the birds' bright promise ...

We feel them stirring gloriously, too --
our young, forsaken dreams.

And oh, how we miss people in the spring. Such small things will quicken the image of the loved one lost, or merely away.

Sunlight on new green grass ...

The smell of lilacs...

A spade on the garden path ...

A battered hat ...

How they surge back at such moments -- mother, father, sister, brother, friend. Or a child. A daughter whose brown legs used to run so lightly down the steps, her soft hair flying. A son whom the wars have claimed ...

A woman's heart always breaks a little in the spring. But spring offers its own ways of healing. Hoe the row a little deeper. Kneel on the ground and dig the roots.

Gather armfuls of bright yellow flowers ...

Or take the house apart and put it back together shining clean.

~~ Marjorie Holmes (1910-2002)

What a glorious way with words she had ...
I wish I could write like that.

[Photos borrowed from the internet]