“This is no thaw. This is spring. What are we to do? Your winter has been destroyed, I tell you! This is Aslan’s doing.”
I have never read the entire Chronicles of Narnia series, but this year, I put them all on my reading list. I read one or two chapters a day. When I read this quote in The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe by the White Witch’s dwarf, of all characters(!), I loved it. It’s a beautiful, triumphant quote all on its own, but it felt so profound to the story I have lived and will surely live again.
Soon we will return to our Garden Lullaby series where I go back in time and share how God used the garden to help me see His love and the life He wanted for me though my womb was empty and my pain was deep. And somewhere along the way I could say in my soul, though not all was right in my world, “This is no thaw. This is spring!” God had healing for me inside and out. I still grieved. I still struggled. But I could breathe. And laugh. I woke up to life. And began to live. I may be taking this C.S. Lewis quote out of context, but it certainly applies!
Not all was well, but I was becoming well. Winter was being destroyed. Month after month. Year after year. When “NO!” screamed in my ears and the bathroom floor felt like home. It didn’t feel like winter was being destroyed, but God was doing it until suddenly there it was,
“This is no thaw. This is spring!”
You may wonder why I am still writing about infertility when I have a son, a daughter due in a few months, and have already written about the healing in a whole book of 97 poems. So here’s at least one reason.
The miracles of God don’t get old. They don’t go away. I’m still living it!
“Come and see what God has done: He is awesome in His deeds toward the children of man.” -Psalm 66:5
Come and hear, all you who fear God, and I will tell you what He has done for my soul.” -Psalm 66:16
Reminders of the spring miracle God did within me keep showing up. And will forever. In my two children, in my garden, in books I read, in poetry I’m inspired to write, in my history with God that touches my present and my future. God’s works are wonderful and they are profound.
I’m not done seeing.
And I’ll keep on sharing all I’ve seen God do.
In those years, I never thought to myself those exact words, “This is no thaw. This is spring!,” but I certainly lived it. Winter couldn’t last forever. Not even when infertility did. Spring filled my soul when nothing filled my womb. And spring greeted my children when they came around and that same spring was beautifully multiplied by their presence.
Miracles everywhere.
What light I have known and life I have lived before, during, after.
people say so many things. . . like you’re in a game you cannot win, like your life has all but ended. but maybe motherhood is a mosaic, a hard wrought, stained glass window where tears and laughter collide, where wounds reopen in the working and glisten if light filters through.
I am cut, reshaped, pieced back. . . and I feel like I could shatter.
photo credit: Hannah A.R. Stories
“so what if you do?” whispers the mother beside me and beyond me. “light will always poke itself through.”
her gentle words feel as balm against the skin of my heart. she holds an armful of sun, scars from stained glass on her hands, laughline wrinkles where the window should hang,
but she wasn’t a game or a life left for dead.
she was a stained glass story, with no window to show for it. and she held all the good things all the people never say. she broke and breathed, stood long, and loved. . . letting every inch of light be every part of her. she was a woman, not a perfect stained glass window.
snapdragons, geraniums, zinnias and roses. wild things on my table, and on the windowsill.
and it was me, like a seed, cracked open and broken, under darkness with water cold over by bones and it was light I could not see, all the warmth I could not feel. if not a mother, no idea who I could be.
rain fell with promise. storms raged in anguish. there was noise, but it was silence for me. I grew, then died, grew again, then bloomed and it wasn’t just one thing I became.
the garden outgrew my soul, and I towered with life like a lighthouse at ocean nothing around but hope.
and I was life in a hundred ways. . . out at sea, in the garden, underground, in the questions, holding flowers, pouring sorrow, always seen always loved by my God.
it was armfuls of spring repeatedly in winter. so it wasn’t all flowers, but it was.-S.V.F. #sierravfpoetry
-S.V.F.
Garden Lullaby series launches tomorrow! Looking forward to sharing how God used the garden to help me heal through infertility. Done in “real time” as I’m sharing past personal reflections!
Quite a few Novembers ago, I remember sitting outside and trudging through the emotions that come with infertility. There was a storm brewing in the distance, but as I sat there I suddenly felt that it would be okay. . . even good. Not right then. Maybe not soon. But sometime. There was a a settled feeling that washed over me. . .it was almost as though I had caught a glimpse of something beautiful, but it happened so fast. I can’t even remember all the details from that cold, fall afternoon. Only that good was coming.
I think that split second moment was a gift from God. . .momentary relief from the fresh, young tulmtuous waves in my soul.
The years following that moment were filled with tears, anguish, hollowness, heartache, the bathroom floor, pain. . .healing, closeness with Christ, the garden, laughter, the joy of a leaf, a life that filled up with life. And all of these things ran together in a way words could never describe, but you can understand. . .because you’ve been there too.
Fast forward to November 2019. I was on the brighter side of healing. My husband and I had recently had a conversation about how we would move forward in our family journey. I remember saying something along the lines of, “I really want children with you.” But I also remember confidently and peacefully closing doors in so many directions while opening ourselves to a life we hadn’t planned, but I finally felt excited for.
Shortly after that, I received a basket from a friend filled with the brigthest flowery things, pens, and a blank notepad. It was gift that seemed to say, “I see you!” And I put that basket of gifts on display!
Mere days later, another friend sent me this mug, joy comes in the morning, alongsisde a beautiful note which I have in the back of my prayer journal from that time. She knew about my struggle with infertility, and these were some of her words, “I pray for you almost every night and have every confidence that God has the most beautiful plan for you and Ben.”
About a week and half or so after that, I took a pregnancy test not expecting much or really anything at all. I had long-since given up taking these tests and asssumed my hormones were acting up because of my increased sugar intake.(Helloooo harvest party! 😉 )
Well, that test turned to two pink lines so fast. I couldn’t believe it, and yet somehow it was so believable. I just laughed! Hope Gives a Eulogy has a poem for that moment and a hundred others I experienced during infertility.
But there it was. Clear as day. Two lines. A yes. My firstborn son.
Flowers given to us by friends when they found out we were pregnant with our son which we eventually planted as his flower. And now they are blooming wildly this November!
Remember that note from my friend sitting in the back of my prayer journal? Around it I wrote, “note + gift from a friend received a week and a half or so before finding out I was pregnant. This was one of 3 meaningful gifts leading up to the great crescendo of our Shasta-boy.”
You’ll notice I didn’t mention a third gift in this blog post, because I don’t remember exactly what it was, but I’ve got it recorded so it happened!
What a parade of gifts before the grand finale of our son. Which, of course, we know is not the finale, because God is always working and weaving miracles and healing and hope realized in so many ways! The reality is I had received thousands of gifts from God in those dark years leading up to those 3 gifts from friends leading up to the gift of a baby I could only yet see in two pink lines.
I hosted our third Thanksgiving in our bright blue home while being 6 or so weeks pregnant. That Thanksgiving was our first holiday with a baby in tow even though we’d never met him yet. The flowery blank notepad given by my friend is now my garden journal.
I totally added the sun flare to this garden journal photo! 😉
Amazingly, I’m writing this blog post on the same November day I found out I was pregnant two years ago! (That wasn’t planned.) Even more beautiful is sitting here typing these words while being 21 weeks pregnant with our little girl.
halfway with our little girl!
I’ve been surprised by both my babies in different, wonderful, totally-of-God ways. We are headed into our fifth hosted Thanksgiving with inexplicable healing and the gift of two children.
And I think it’s important to note that with God this story could have happened in a thousand different miraculously good ways. . .children or not. I believe no matter what, I could still sit in November 2021 and recount God’s goodness. Which solidifies the truth that no matter what happens in our future, I will still be able to recount God’s goodness, be awestruck by His gifts, stunned by His timing, filled with His healing and hope, surrounded by a life made with life by God.
But here I am now. This is the story to date. The good gifts are endless. God’s goodness is endless. I’m moved by God’s love for me. As I wrote in my poem, Lest I Forget!, “and it was flowers, and Novembers, and pink skies, summer nights where Your blessing took over my life, and I was crying and laughing and breathing and longing and it was beautiful lest I forget!”
Today with the gift of my son and daughter, my husband and a 5th Thanskgiving in my home, I pray as I did in 2019, “Help me receive this gift with open, celebratory, trusting hands.”
God makes life. “Come and see what God has done: he is awesome in his deeds toward the children of man.” -Psalm 66:5
Sierra V. Fedorko 