As I open the garage door, I gaze at the front yard, where our very own dogwood tree welcomes me home, its first blooms cheering my winter-struck flower bed.

Spring is my favorite time of the year. I love the fall, with its magnificent, colorful forests and crisp cool air after the scorching summer months, but there’s something about spring that makes my heart sing for joy.

After a long, dreadful winter, when nature dies and rests in complacent abandon, the first blooms remind me that there’s an end for every sorrow… and there’s hope in every trial.
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I find it important to create visual reminders of God’s grace in our lives. Symbols often anchor our hearts in truths which are usually shadowed by our troubles. As we go through the dreadful winters of death of a loved one, unemployment, loneliness or sickness, it is so very hard to keep our focus beyond our circumstances. The blooming of dogwood trees in spring has become one of those symbols to me: a reminder to keep my focus in check, each time I’m going through a shadowy valley.

‘”No pain lasts forever,” the blooms sing to me. God is always at work, birthing new joys when we think all hope is gone.

The wise King Solomon put it this way: “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens:

a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance (…)” Ecclesiastes 3:4

I can’t compare other people’s sufferings with my own, but I’ve certainly had my share of troubles. I’ve gone through many health problems, including cancer. I’ve lost a loved one in a tragic accident. We’ve lost a lot of money in a business venture. We’ve experienced unemployment and the financial burden that it brings to a family. I’ve experienced the emptiness and loneliness that followed my separation from family and friends when I moved to America.

Life has certainly not always been a bed of thornless roses. But as I look past each trouble I’ve faced, this truth stands out, larger than anything I’ve ever endured:

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Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning - Psalm 30:5
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This truth, proclaimed by King David, who certainly knew hardship and pain, has been repeatedly tested and proven in my life:

God has always provided me with the grace needed to endure each testing – if only I would choose to look up to Him, instead of fixing my eyes on my fleeting circumstances.
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I look at the picture we took almost nine years ago in front of our dogwood tree and I can’t help but smile.

At the time we planted it, the tree was but a small, puny green shrub, dwarfed by the weight of our troubles. I was pregnant with our second daughter when we planted it. We had just lost an unthinkable amount of money in a business venture. We had no idea how we would make it with a toddler and a baby. The dogwood tree peeks from behind us in the picture, and today it’s as if I hear it say:

“Keep your focus on God, Holbrook family! This too shall pass. Just as you’ll watch me grow and bloom, one day you’ll realize it – God was pruning your character, strengthening and preparing you for a new chapter, in which the sorrows of the long and restless night are but a shadow compared to the beauty and strength that He’ll bring forth. If only you trust and obey Him.”

Twelve years have passed since that Spring, a time when my husband and I had to chose not to lean on our own understanding, but tell our hearts to believe and trust our faithful God. Our dogwood bush grew into a beautiful, tall and strong tree.

Much like our faith.

As I write these words today, I can look out my office window and see my blooming tree, standing as a faithful reminder that my God has repeatedly breathed new life through my veins after each dreary winter of my soul. His faithfulness is everlasting. His love is overpowering.

He is faithful, Winter-Weary Soul. He is faithful! Your Spring shall come! Tell your fickle, hurting heart… to believe!

The post A Promise for the Winter-Weary Soul… appeared first on Soaring With Him Ministries.

The brisk autumn air hit my face as I sped down the last hill. Used to walk until the end of the road and turn around, I glanced to the right, and my heart leaped for joy.

“Finally!” I said to myself.

My feet rushed across the street. My morning walk would take a much-anticipated turn towards the lake in front of my subdivision, where fiery red trees shouted an invitation to dive into the beauty of God’s creation in the fall.

I had walked these sidewalks for weeks, eagerly waiting to witness the change of colors reflected on the placid lake. Unseasonably cold temperatures last week prevented me from walking outside… but it was all worth it. The cold temperatures had certainly been the catalyst to plunge nature into the beautiful, ephemeral festival of colors that fill our eyes every Fall.

“Lord… You.are.so.beautiful…”

My eyes filled with tears of joy… and my prayer walk turned into praise.

I had been walking and praying, crying out to God on behalf of friends who are facing dark valleys. As I prayed, my heart was burdened. Battle prayers were lifted, as God prompted me to intercede with the passion of someone who walked in their shoes…

Family issues…

Cancer…

Job losses…

The winters of our souls.

As my feet approached the trees, strategically planted by the lake, my shoes got caught in a carpet of red leaves that had fell. That’s when an unusual thought crossed my mind. Blame it on the creative vein that pumps within a writer’s heart.

“If I were a tree, oblivious that spring would one day come, I would be desperate right now.”

The leaves – so carefully nurtured through the Spring and Summer months… now fall off my branches. And I can do nothing. I can only watch in dismay, wondering if I could have done something about it.

I would not know that the falling is part of the process… that nature’s pruning is as needed as it is beautiful. That the old must fall in order that the new may grow… and that there is beauty in the unraveling. Even if I don’t see it… or feel it.

Even if it hurts.

A few more weeks and the beautiful red maple trees by the lake will be bare. We know the fall is just the beginning of the season of desolate cold, fruitless months. Those trees will be dormant. No one will rest under their shadow. No one will point their cameras towards their bare branches. It will seem as if they are… forgotten.

But you and I know better.

The dormant season will pass. And the trees, planted by the water, will continue to draw the nourishment they need to survive. They look dead… but they are very much alive. The winter months are but a season. One of four. One that will pass.

“Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord and whose trust is the Lord. For he will be like a tree planted by the water, that extends its roots by a stream and will not fear when the heat comes; but its leaves will be green, and it will not be anxious in a year of drought, nor cease to yield fruit.” Jeremiah 17:7-8

Today, you may feel like the tree, helpless as you watch your life fall apart before your eyes.

Or maybe you feel like a dormant tree in the winter months… in a season of waiting for life to pump through your veins again and fruits of joy, hope and peace burst forth. Will you let me encourage you today, my friend?
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I can’t type these words without feeling overwhelmed about the faithfulness of our God – a faithfulness as sure as the coming of each yearly season:

So long as you stay close to Jesus, the Living Water…

So long as your roots reach out to the Source of your strength… even if sometimes you do it mechanically… because  you really don’t feel like praying, but you do it, anyway… or reading your Bible, but you read it, anyway.

So long as you plant your heart in the Truth of God’s Word… and declare with your weary, yet hopeful heart:

“My God is faithful.”

“My Redeemer lives.”

“My Savior is in control.”

“Jehovah Rapha still heals… Jehovah Jireh still provides… El Shaddai still reigns.”

My God is faithful. My Redeemer lives. My Savior is in control. Jehovah Rapha still heals… Jehovah Jireh still provides… El Shaddai still reigns.
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So long as you do not allow the father of lies to pester your heart and thoughts, but rather, “destroy speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.” (2 Corinthians 10:5)

God’s promises for your life WILL reign.

I speak with the authority of someone who has been through many winters of the soul… and pressed on to watch Spring flourish again. I shout with blessed conviction, defying any lie of the devil, or wavering of my heart:

This too shall pass! This too shall pass!

He promised to never leave you, nor forsake you. Not once or twice. He said it many times. (Deuteronomy 31:6, 8; Hebrews 13:5; Isaiah 41:10-13; Matthew 28:20; Psalms 55:22; 1 Chronicles 28:20)

And He.cannot.lie.

Will you share this post with someone who is hurting? You can also grab my free printable below to remind you that God is in control… and that this too will pass.

The post This Too Shall Pass appeared first on Soaring With Him Ministries.