It seems that new life is peeking out from everywhere. Daffodils and tulips, white blossoms on every tree, even those without white blankets sport hues of a lavender sort. We leave doors open on purpose, windows open with intention, and spring-cleaning bears its name proudly: we’re excited about the fresh things of today.
I’m prone to cabin fever of the most feverish kind, weeks of temperamental weather have gotten me pegged as bipolar, and I’m finding that joy is a scarce commodity. Nostalgia weakens my resolve—I just felt so much happier this time last year; yet, I am reminded last night, happiness is not the same as joy, and I will explore that when I have more energy in my soul.
It’s the thought of my soul that recently takes up space in my head. That wretched thing housing my emotion and weakness and joy and passion and all those things which make this body simultaneously a body of death with the hope of resurrection. It’s the discovery that I have a soul. A new exploration for me, someone who tries so desperately to work out her salvation from the outside-in and discern what ‘walking by the spirit’ looks like for this sinner. I am a righteous Christian, I find. I am a defeated Christian, I find. Always attempting, never attaining. Always aspiring, never breathing.
What is most exciting to me of late is that I have a soul that can be restored. My spirit will always have more Jesus than my body and my body will always have more evil than my spirit, but that mysterious thing in the middle is the thing that is subject to the temptation and the glorious redemption available at my request and His favor.
This isn’t theology and is probably heresy of some sort, so don’t quote me and don’t hold me to it: I am finding that in the middle of what seems to be a lot of newness around me, there are really just old things producing the same thing, only more beautifully than ever before. These trees have blossomed for a century of springs, but this year’s is the best, I’m sure, because trees don’t get nostalgic, they are subject to the Creator and so am I.
So is my soul.
He restores it. He returns it every time, the same, but somehow gloriously better than ever before.
