About this time, every year since I moved to the Midwest, a meme starts circulating on my Facebook feed.
It lists, with a few variations, in chronological form the 11 seasons of the Midwest, starting with winter.
Next up is fool’s spring, second winter, the spring of deception, then third winter, mud season, and only after alllllll that: actual spring.
I’ve seen a few others that add “the great pollination” in – particularly important, and poignant, for those seasonal allergy sufferers among us. I think this comes just before actual spring.
It’s always good for a few laughs, a few more groans, and the reminder to recalibrate expectations for the wildly looping, backwards and forwards journey that is the pathway to spring in this part of the country.
I was thinking about it a lot today, not just because I’ve gotten my parka and my dog’s winter coat back out for another morning walk in 20 degrees, but because of our Backyard Pilgrim prompt for today.
We’re invited to walk around our neighborhood and look for something that is “growing – or struggling to grow – into what it was created to become.” I think every single flower on my street feels that way right now, but Matt (the author) invited me to think about how I might feel that way too.
How I, like Jacob, might be wrestling with God or otherwise struggling to become who God wants me to be.
Lent is a particularly good and important time to look deeply at that kind of wrestling and to engage in it. After all, we’re trying to place ourselves in the wilderness with Jesus, a place where there are much fewer distractions, and more time and energy to focus on that wrestling or struggle.
What’s so great about the story of Jacob is that he was always wrestling – grabbing his brother Esau’s heel as they came out of the womb, vying for birthrights, conniving for his wives – and it was usually not to the glory of God. But one time, he wrestled all night long, refusing to give up until his mysterious wrestling partner would give him God’s blessing. That was the night when Jacob did indeed get a blessing, and also a new name: Israel, he who wrestles with God.
Jacob and his wrestling were redeemed and ultimately used as an important part of God’s story.
Even though he, like the flowers on my street waiting to bloom, like the many things that are struggling to grow at any given moment, went backwards and forwards on his journey.
In this moment, somewhere around the third winter or the spring of deception, the fourth week of Lent, the third year of COVID – if you feel that way too, if you feel deeply inside of you the struggle of becoming who you are meant to be, take heart.
Not only are you not alone, you’re in really, really good company. So many of the enduring characters in our scripture stories are men and women who moved forward, and backward; who stalled out; who stopped and started again. Who wrestled and wrestled and wrestled.
It’s a journey, and not a linear one.
But ultimately that journey will lead us toward God using or redeeming all parts of us, and to me that seems eminently worth sticking it out for.
So today, I am going to take some deep breaths, to witness the flowers in their struggle to bloom, and to feel the kinship we have with each other. The wrestling will endure for a time, but joy always – always – comes in the morning.
-Pastor Jen
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