Surrender Spring (2)

I started observing Lent last year.  Far from making me feel more self-righteous, it has confronted me with my failures, and how easily, even in the middle of striving to watch myself, I make mistakes.  I need His guidance as much as ever.

This Lent, I decided to take a break from Tumblr, which was exactly what I didn't want to do.  I think of Tumblr - the way I have been using it the past year - as a good thing, rather than a guilty pleasure.  I've met and re-met many wonderful people on there, who inspire and encourage me.  It has not even been a week yet, and though I've been busy enough with other things, I miss it pretty bad.   However, I don't want to become too dependent on it, so the challenge can only be for the best.

You may remember this post from nearly a year ago.  Its title has been my motto lately.  I wasn't quite clear to you what I meant by it, but I can say I both understood and meant it at the time.

Spring to me has not ever been a time of change, but a time of culmination, even disorder.  Spring is my season of discontent.  When I'm "spring-struck" I am bottled-up and cornered in problems invented by either me or society, and it doesn't matter which.  I get lonely and cabin feverish for adventure.  Spring tells me to stay in the cabin and finish school, finish school, finish school...  I have good cries that aren't so good.

Why am I admitting this to the world?  I know there is someone who understands, somewhere.  Not only that, I have to tell you I'm taking this seriously.  I once would let myself get caught off-guard by the predictable.  Not this year.  I'm willing to say that, for whatever reason, it is a difficult time of year.  I'm also willing to do something about it - that is, giving it up.

How do you give it up?  You pray, and you try.  By "trying," I mean you sometimes find yourself literally telling yourself that code phrase, surrender spring.  But the overarching idea is to give up anxiety, as well as give up the feeling that you must make some new decision or control something.   Dedicate time to feeling thankful.  Give yourself the proper sense of dignity, that kind where you let yourself be sensible and logical about things.  Write things out, and down, and into the past.  It feels good to give it up, and don't lose sight of that ultimate feeling.

So I am definitely talking to myself now.  It's part of "writing it out," I guess, to blog about it.  I'll go to bed at last and enjoy the sound of the spring rain on the roof.  :)