In late December, the seed and nursery catalogs began arriving. I dove in. When I came up for air, I tried to remind myself I was planning a vegetable plot, not an eight-hundred square foot formal rose garden.

It is easy to get a little lost in a pile of seed catalogs.

These are the days for rest, both for you and your garden. Unless you live in Florida.

I’ve heard it said that southern gardeners should take their winter break in late summer. Which is sort-of true. No one can grow tomatoes in Florida in August. But, it is also not true at all. You may give your vegetable beds a break, but the grass, the weeds, and those horrible invasive vines covered in thorns do not take a break. Unless you want your house to disappear back into the primeval jungle, you had better not neglect the August garden entirely.

I only gardened in Florida for two years, but I am still recovering. As it turns out, I need a good long break from working my bit of ground.

I need a season for rest. I need a season for dreams.

snowscape

 

Rest can be painful. A persistant ache. Dreaming hurts.

I love winter in the north, but I don’t find it easy. I long for sunshine. For warm air on the skin of my arms. For flowers and green grass and those little breezes that feel like a caress. It is a season for rest, but this means it is also a season for waiting, for desiring, for pressing hard against the blunt edges of everything you dream about but do not yet hold in your arms.

It is a season of emptiness.

True rest means returning to God. But this is not as easy nor as pretty as it sounds. It is often anguish that sends us back.

Back to the source of dreams, back to the source of every good and new thing.

Back to the only One who can renew our hope.

 

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