The Springtime of the Soul

He has called you by name and you are his. Trust that He is leading you. Refuse to deny it or even doubt it. He loves you with an everlasting love. Let the spark of divine peace and freedom again begin to swell in your heart.

There are signs to be read – He does want you to take opportunities placed before you to make the most of the present moment. Keep your mind and heart open and ready to respond. Wait in joyful hope. Grow strong in your knowledge of the Truth: He has created you for more. He desires your flourishing in all that He has anointed you for. This is the season to reap a fresh new harvest sown over the last ten years.

There is deep rest and renewal coming. Lean into Him and hold Him close, for He longs to whisper in your ear a sacred truth that will take your breath away. You shall again experience awe and wonder with unveiled eyes. You shall know the sacred mysteries and be filled with joy.

Summer is coming, and with it the glory days of your beauty and health and joy of spirit. You are on the brink of something entirely new. Discernment is about cutting away to become an authentic version of yourself. He has literally ‘unveiled’ you and shown you your naked beauty.

Go into 2020 with a blank slate. Let yourself believe that all shall be well and you yourself will be well again. It is only your life! Be bold and do not calculate too carefully. Love without measure, hope without caution, believe without restraint. Let your soul expand and flourish, fully healthy and alive to Joy.

You have only ever known how to meet expectation from those whose authority you deem most necessary. You have been comfortable in obedience until now, when you finally hear the call to defiance, to rebellion against cultural norms and pressures. He has withdrawn you from the structural security of trustworthy authority. He is abandoning you in the deep end of the biggest philosophical questions because He wants to prove to you that you know how to swim. Grow a backbone and say what you think. Stop censoring your thought and drawing from it only tame conclusions. You must forge your own path. The opinions of others weigh you down whenever you think upon them – but they do not matter. Burn your bridges. The calls on your heart are irresistible and you will not be satisfied until you chase them.

You are in difficult and murky waters, but fear not – others have gone before. You must experience your own fury at the mystery if you are to be purified by it. Christ will die, and you too shall embark on the long loneliness. You too will come to know its loveliness.

Look to the Cross and be radiant. He has not come to break you to pieces under the weight of the world’s sin, but to piece you together in harmony and hope. Take His heart – the heart of authenticity and grace and mercy – and go forward in the knowledge that you are loved beyond measure.

You have lost your peace of heart because you have doubted His love for you. You have interpreted the burdens of this year as a punishment for sins and weaknesses.

But come bathe in the cool waters of His peace, a peace the world cannot give. Unlearn your rigidity and turn towards freedom of heart. Let your imperfections in charity wash over you and pass by like ocean waves. He loves you as you are – serious, sensitive, imaginative, intelligent, restless, artistic, deep, quirky, poetic, melancholic, filled with yearning. You are precious in His sight and honoured and He loves you.

He is making all things new. He has been recreating you again and again, allowing you to understand different aspects of who He is and who He calls you to be. You once gave Him a Fiat – that you would go wherever He sent you and give yourself fully to those whom He entrusted to you; that you would be a beacon of radical love and hope in communities plagued by darkness. You longed to make a radical gift of yourself where He needed you most. You gave a pure and clear ‘yes’ and were perfectly happy. That seed burst and grew in your heart with prayer and contemplation. You knew that empty was beautiful and that in the silence of the heart He would speak.

But then you did not trust Providence. You grasped at false starts. You took spiritual truths and tried to project them onto tangible realities, tried to find an earthly answer to your heavenly longing. You grasped at the idea of a community you could call ‘Home’, a mission you could call ‘Fulfillment’ and a life message you could call the Christ child.

And all the while He grew within you, defying all expectations. He grew eyes to see the soul in front of Him, hands to hold others’, a digestive system to be sustained by secular bread. He became more than an idea, a simple word sown in your womb. He became human and asked humanity of you.

“Will you give me your whole self?” He asked again and again, “Not the idea of you, but the concrete, complex, even unspiritual Truth of you?” And you, New Eve, have the chance now to answer Him with a pure and clear Fiat. Will you believe that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled? You gave Him permission to lead – and He has led you here.

The chrysalis seems most stagnant the moment before new life bursts forth. Be patient and do not let your heart be troubled. Is He not God, without beginning or end? Mighty is His power; great is His strength; your soul shall indeed find a resting place.

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AMDG