It was one of those nights.
There were thoughts processing in my head but I couldn't make sense of any of it. I knew I was thinking but I had no idea what I was thinking about. My heart knew, it felt stuffy and hurt a little, but my unconscious knew better than to allow me to comprehend those thoughts.
The bus brought me to the starbucks in my neighborhood; the sky had turned from a hazy blue to pitch black as the barista made my drink. The coffee shop was full of people and I couldn't find a seat anywhere. It was a cold night but I decided to sit outside; the hot cup of coffee felt nice in my icy hands. I sat there thinking about absolutely nothing, the silence felt good. I needed to get away from all the noise, whether its at school or home or even my annoying thoughts; I was finally alone and away from the world. It wasn't enough though, I was probably there for half an hour or less but my parents were expecting me to be home at a certain time. I was reluctant to leave but I finally got up, threw out my now empty cup and started walking home.
I always look up at the sky hoping to see stars when I'm out at night; I didn't see any that day but a tree caught my attention. It was fully bloomed with white blossoms that glowed like stars on a dark cloudless night. "Wow. Winter's been over," those words popped into my head. This spring has been so cold that I was still wearing the same things I wore all winter; jeans and sweaters, ugg boots and my grayish brown coat. Its not that I forgot the season changed but a part of me wasn't aware that spring had came because of the cold weather I was still experiencing. Seeing the tree full of blossoms, I realized that spring was already here; all I had to do was look up.
There are times in our lives where we feel stuck in a cold winter storm; lost under a pile of the snowy mess life decides to shower us with. We may try to get out but fail along the way and begin to mope in our failure. We lose hope that we can ever leave the situation that we're in. In psychology, that's called learned helplessness and I believe that is usually the reason why we're stuck in our storms. We start believing that our problems are too big to conquer and give up on trying altogether.
Pastor Carl Lentz compared life's problems to mountains in one of his sermons; sometimes, they really can be that big. He said that if we stand at the foot of the mountain and look directly at it, it will fill up our entire field of vision and all we can see is how big this mountain is. There's no end to what we're looking at and there is no hope in getting over it because we can't see a way to get to the other side. He said sometimes we get so caught up by the size of our mountains that we make the silly mistake of never looking up. When you look up, you'll see the vast sky above the mountain top; there is an end to these issues, there is a way of getting over it. God is so much bigger than our problems and all we have to do is turn to him for help. He'll take care of it... He'll take care of YOU. He promises to heal the broken hearted and bind up their wounds (Psalm 147:3), he promises to be our refuge and strength (Psalms 46:1). God is a man of his words; all we have to do is look to him for help.
There's hope when we look up and turn to God.
Sometimes, thats the only way we can tell that winter's been over.
