Hope and the Holy Spirit

There's a certain depression that comes on beautiful days, because I know I can't keep them. Springtime is so lovely, big, blue, warm. When it's like this outside, there's one minute where I forget all of my responsibilities and worries and stressors and I'm just happy. And then I remember that I have things to do, and then I resent all of those things because I want nothing but the thing I can't have: spring bliss, forever. 

Once, and just once, I had the perfect spring day: I plopped myself down on Bowman late in the afternoon on a Wednesday, ate the most delicious apple that's ever been in my mouth, and I watched people run around in the glory that is the sun. For the rest of that day, I felt like Cinderella: waltzing instead of walking, singing instead of talking, and blissfully ignorant to bad or sad things, because my contentment was bigger than those things. That day became my standard for spring days, and now I live in pursuit of that same exact day again. 

This is what goes through my mind on spring days: joy joy joy joy and then: pressure pressure pressure pressure. 

I feel joy because dogwoods are here and I can smell them. They don't smell sweet or especially appealing, but they smell like nostalgia and they smell like it's not winter anymore, and that gives me a huge deep breath and some peace. 

I feel joy because I think maybe I am Anne of Green Gables. Maybe all of the mistakes I make are charming and endearing and everybody is enamored with my constant charisma. Maybe my sins are really just logistical issues and cute idiosyncrasies.

I feel joy because my skin can feel warmth now, and that warmth is a vessel straight to my heart. I want everyone to be my best friend, and I want every meal to be a picnic, and I want to be a human embodiment of springtime.

I feel joy because life isn't stagnant after all. Things I thought were perpetually brown or dead are suddenly daffodils! And everything around me is pretty, and full, and important - flowers, grass, weeds are all beaming. And then life events that I thought were doomed are suddenly less so. Everything looks like it's on the up and up. 

I feel pressure because I have things to do. I have assignments to complete, sleep to sleep, an education to somehow get, food to make, friends with whom to talk about things: sometimes good and sometimes hard and sad. I want so badly to put a pause on my whole life and be outside until I'm filled up to the brim, but I never will be. There is not enough spring for me to ever not want it anymore. I feel mocked by each of the choices I made previously to right now, because they are the reason I have to say no to what I want to do so that I can be inside and be "productive." 

I feel pressure because I'm the one who was whining and begging for spring. And now it's here but I still find reasons to complain. I tell myself that nice days are an opportunity for extrinsic joy, and if I can't take them up on that, then I'm being wasteful and ungrateful. 

I feel pressure because what if I'm never as happy as I was on that one Wednesday? What if I've already received the maximum capacity of happiness that was allotted for my life and now all I'll ever know of joy are affectionate, reflective memories?

I feel pressure because I'm really not Anne of Green Gables. I knew it the whole time; I was just hoping that spring had erased my imperfections. But Anne is fiction and I'm nonfiction. I'm a real person, which means my sins are actually sins, and they are innately depraved moral issues and bad decisions I make daily, not just logistical mishaps. It's disheartening.

I motivated myself through winter by saying that spring would be here and that it would be everything, and that's why I'm so internally conflicted now: I expect it to be perfect (hence the pressures), and it's not, but it's still better than winter (hence the joys). I'm overwhelmed by joys and pressures and every emotion feels urgent.

I spent winter holding my breath, hoping that when it was gone, I'd be warm constantly and always, and I'd be able to breathe. And I can breathe, but being able to breathe doesn't mean life is cured. 

When spring came and the world was still broken, I was so confused and sad. But the thing I forgot about all winter when motivating myself through it was that spring isn't the same thing as Heaven. Spring is on the earth, and the earth is a broken place. Heaven is still far away from this place. 

This is all I know to do: have hope. Hope is a belief, not a wish. Hope and the Holy Spirit perch in the soul. Hope knows that a perfect place exists, and when I get to be there, this won't be an issue.

Love, 

Lauralicious