Bustin' Out

I took a walk by myself this evening. At first, I went because I had to. Then I didn't want to come back.

This is the surely most glorious Michigan spring I've ever seen. I keep expecting disappointment, but it's never delivered. This early spring hasn't turned out to be a teaser-- it's for real. And for gorgeous.

I can't believe how green everything is and how all the trees are bursting into bloom and here it is, only April 11. I don't usually let myself get my hopes up too high until, oh, about May first.

I kicked myself for not taking my camera on my walk. Why I didn't pick it up on my way out the door, I can't understand. But I found that I just wanted to drink it in, this Spring everywhere, and I had no way to hold onto it. No camera, no sketchbook and box of paints (as if I even paint anymore... [deep sigh]).

I almost felt like I needed to use another sense in order to be satisfied. If only I could take a bite and taste it, dip my fingers into the glowing green-gold sunlight, sink my hands into a whole field of plush green grass so rich it could almost be deep-pile velvet. The blossoms and new leaves look so light and tenuously attached to the trees that I was just sure they could rain down on my face. The Red-winged Black Birds and pesky Grackles fussed in the trees all around me, making an enormous racket that I could feel in my teeth. The pungent, spicy, garlicky smell of wild mustards in the farm fields tickled in the back of my throat.

I think that was just what I needed. I've been a tight ball of nerves and emotions lately. I'm just not myself. I can't keep a thought in my head or focus in a straight line. I just want to cry about pretty much everything and nothing at all.

My body is taken over by this creative force that I have no control over-- a freight train in a quiet little whisper. I'm overjoyed and shaking in my boots. I tell myself what a wuss I am-- it's such an ordinary thing, this baby-growing. But it's extraordinary as well and I'm too sensitive to it. Everything we have is from God, so evident in Creation bursting all around me in springtime frenzy, and now here is a powerful little piece of creation happening right in me.

It's all truly astounding.