Planting in the Bleak 0f Mid-Winter
by Laura Holmes
I recently ran across this quotation from Sarah Bessey regarding hope.
“We don’t get to have hope without grief. Hope dares to admit that not everything is as it should be, and so if we want to be hopeful, first we have to grieve.”
I don’t know about you, but I have been doing a lot of grieving lately. It doesn’t take much effort at all to rattle off a dozen situations that are not as they should be. Every time you turn on the news, or get on social media for a “quick second”, you are inundated with any number of tragedies, disclosures, test results, or market reports that send us careening towards the dark hole that can be hopelessness.
It can be difficult to find hope these days. Joy, peace, and love get a leg up with holiday excitement, but hope? Hope has to claw its way to the surface through a whole lot of “not hope”.
I’ve come to the time of year when I find myself wishing I had managed to plant spring bulbs for my garden. Yes, I have tulips, hyacinths, crocus, and daffodils that are steady and dependable, but after a long season of winter, I always wish I had more. Bulb planting season always lands when my professional life is ramped up with parent/teacher conferences and other obligations, so while my intentions are good, my actual bandwidth for planting bulbs is low. And, frankly, who could fault me for that? Planting bulbs is a chore. Digging holes, dropping in misshapen, unimpressive papery blobs into the earth, covering them up on repeat until at last you have…a garden that looks exactly like it did before you planted any bulbs and, at my age, an aching back and cramped fingers.
Other than ticking a chore off your list, planting bulbs has no instant gratification. But, that is the way it needs to be. Bulbs need a time of cold stratification before they can become the glorious spring display we love to see after a long, cold season. In an online article, “Bulb Life Cycle In Winter: What Bulbs Do For Months Under The Snow”, Bonnie Grant says that “the cold temperatures cause the bulb to break glucose into smaller molecules which lowers the freeze temperature to protect the bulb from damage.”
The bulb knows how to protect itself from being damaged. It is hard-wired to survive. In the dark, cold hole of the earth, it actively keeps itself alive. Alive and waiting.
But then the chilling finally ends which signals to the bulb that conditions are improving. It’s a message that says, “It’s ok now. Go ahead. Send down your roots. Start clawing through the dirt toward the sun. It’s going to be fine.” That’s hope, isn’t it? Identifying the not-yet-ness of this cycle, surviving, and holding the promise, the potential for something better, something glorious.
But to do that, they first have to live through the season of cold and damp. We’ve been living through a whole lot of cold, hard, and ever-increasingly difficult times, and yet, we can do things, small unimpressive things, to plant tiny bulbs of hope. Hope that knows how to protect itself when it seems like nothing is changing, when it’s bleak. Hope that claws its way through with the potential for something better.
Planting hope could look like making cookies for the contract worker who keeps showing up as promised, smiling at the cashier who has had a really long shift, fulfilling a Christmas wishlist for a child in foster care, or sending a postcard to someone whose Christmas lights make you smile every time you pass. Look for ways to plant hope. I promise that even if you don’t get to see it blossom into something beautiful, it all matters. It will bloom. It really will.
I believe that God sees us planting those bulbs of hope and blesses our efforts. Hope is not a silly exercise, it is an exercises in faith and trust.
Bob Proctor said, “Faith and fear both demand you to believe in something you cannot see. You choose.” Hope is like that too. I intend to plant some hope this season, and maybe you can try too.