“Your inward life is now sprouting, bringing forth fruit” (Sgs 4;13)

It is time.
It is time to forgive yourself…
It is time to forgive yourself for what you didn’t see.
What you didn’t understand…
What you couldn’t feel…

It is time to forgive yourself…
For the people you didn’t save…
What you didn’t become…
Who you didn’t save…
What you didn’t change…

It is time to discover the beauty of falling leaves…
Letting go…
Trusting transition…
Blessing the winter…
Hoping the spring…

It is time to rest…
In the silent spaces of sorrow and silence…
In the hurt and pain of wounds and shame…
In the broken and fragmented and lost…

It is time to believe…
In the inward spring…
The new life sprouting…
The blossoming and growing and ripening…

I find transitions challenging. Leaving the familiar behind puts me back in the fragile place where I wonder if I’m good enough… If I’ll make it… If anyone cares…

I’m sure no one can see the swirl of emotions and thoughts and general confusion that reigns within, sweeping away the secure self-image that just weeks before had been mine.

Transitions are difficult times of immense grace, severe gifts of mercy, gentle or drastic pruning that makes way for new blossoms that unexpectedly surprise us with new futures and joy.

I often will put myself “forehead to forehead” with Jesus in prayer—an image from the lay mystic Gabrielle Bossis in her popular spiritual classic He and I. Praying in this quiet, unreflective way that suspends all thought and straining opens my heart.

And during transitions, I need to open my heart. To believe that my Beloved One is at work within me. So one day recently I asked Jesus what he had to say to me regarding a transition I was in.

He said, “You silly willy….”

That absolutely got my attention!

“You silly willy. Your heart has been longing for more. You’ve been aching under the strain of all that has been your daily life. Here I am helping you out. So just go with the flow….”

The lightness of Jesus’ touch was exactly what I needed.

“Your inward life is now sprouting, bringing forth fruit.
What a beautiful paradise unfolds within you.
When I’m near you, I smell aromas of the finest spice,
For many clusters of my exquisite fruit
Now grow within your inner garden” (Sgs 4:13-14 TPT).

Transitions can be initiated by yourself or others. By your decisions for change and growth. By others’ decisions which may not take into account your needs. They can seem positive or negative. Hope-filled or disastrous. Be the beginning of something new or the disastrous end of something gratefully over. Tactfully orchestrated or bluntly dropped on you.

In the transition, in the threshold between what was and what will be, God is at work for you and within you. Outside my window the wind is caressing the trees. The leaves are almost singing as they rustle against one another. Those leaves did nothing to bring themselves into life. They are the fruit of the living tree. They sprouted from the ends of the twigs in the early spring, emerged into maturity, and are now getting ready to be released, to become the lovely shades of fall colors that are pushed along by the cold winds of the late autumn.

Friends, in whatever part of the cycle we find ourselves, we can be sure that we are part of the living Tree, the living Vine.

We receive…
Loved into being…
Nurtured into maturity…
Gently moved into the freedom of trusting the winter…

Bearing within us the cycle of hope…
of gentle winter and determined spring…
of releasing death and innocently new life…
of Calvary and the Garden of the Resurrection…

Live within the Tabernacle of your Heart where Jesus is always living… loving… giving… blessing….