A New Season

At the risk of sounding like a real loser, here's my 2014 health resume.  In just the past seven weeks, I have experienced a kidney stone that ultimately required surgery, a virus that hit me the day after my surgery, and am now fighting a staph infection, which I am earnestly praying will not require a hospital stay (seeing as I'm sure that's where I picked up the bacteria in the first place).  I have been put on my butt.  From pain and fever.  Multiple times.

I don't like being on my butt.  At all.  I like to be useful.  And being on my butt just gives me time to think about how useless I am.  Then I cry.  So, I've cried a lot and had to accept help a lot.  And that's just not something I do.  I've got a little bit of a pride thing.

Anyway...

This morning, Abby woke up before anyone else, and when I met her in the kitchen, she was fully dressed in the brightest tank top and shorts combination she could find in her closet, with a ponytail in her hair and flip-flops on her feet.  I said, "Don't you look like spring?" To which she replied, "Why do you think I picked this outfit?  I'm going to go see how warm it is outside."  Right then.  At 7:15am.  Apparently, to Abby, the advent of spring is a pretty big deal.  She was literally bouncing with excitement over the new season.

At that moment, I decided that I was glad that despite the fever from the staph infection, I somehow got through a full school day with the kids the day prior because I didn't have to feel as guilty about making The First Day of Spring an official Sheppard Family Holiday.  For our "school" holidays, you don't have to brush your hair, put on matching clothes (or even change out of your pajamas), wash your face, keep your hands clean, or wear shoes, and getting dirty is just a sign that you did it right.

The rule for the First Day of Spring was "If you're inside, you're doing school.  If you're outside, you can play."  I'm not trying to brag to those of you who seem stuck in an eternal winter, but it was pretty much the most beautiful first day of spring I can remember.

These even peeked open for us.  Literally today.  I think God planned that just for Abby to make it even more special.

We enjoyed the sunshine that ushered in the new season.  I think even the birds had a little extra pep in their step today.

 

This little number was a team effort on the part of Ben and Abby who collected all of the scarves in the house to create a pulley system for sending "mail" between the different parts of the playground.  My only question was - Why do we have so many scarves?  Umm, we live in Georgia.  (And I'm just noticing that Ben was absent from the backyard for the duration of the picture-taking.  Clever boy.  He avoids the camera like his mother.)

We're just so glad she finally has enough hair to get "bed head."

I was fever-free for twelve hours.  And we made the most of them.  (We even got in a math lesson...score!)

I am ready for spring.  But more than that, I'm ready for a new season.  I truly feel like God is trying to get my attention with these random ailments.  And I'm praying that with this new season, He will open up my eyes to the message He's trying to get across to me.  Discernment.  That's what I need.  He might very well just be telling me I need to rest.  Or maybe it's that I need to trust Him a little more and myself a little less...you know, the pride thing I mentioned.  Maybe he's trying to tell me to stop being annoyed by people who seem chronically sick by making me into one of them.  (Hey, I've never claimed to be nice.)

I wish you all the most beautiful of spring times, especially those of you who seem to have fallen under Elsa's curse this winter.  Steal some moments to just take it all in.  I never cease to be awed by the rebirth of spring.  God's creation, man.  He was good at it.