Chilling Hours

If I close my eyes, the whoosh of the wind sounds a bit like the tide washing ashore.

Ebb and flow.  A rush and silence.

If only it were the ocean instead of a bone-chilling February day not even set to break freezing.

My mom always tells me that winter has its own distinct beauty--bare and minimalistic.

Beauty I find not.  The world looks harsh and hard, like the angular structure of a bitter old woman's jaw, which has found its strength in being clenched.

And it's so quiet.

Chirping birds, laughing children, barking dogs are lost from this wintry soundtrack because, well, no one wants to be outside for a reason.

So it's just the gentle whip of tidal winds that whispers wistfully, crinkling what few brown leaves are left dangling upon a forlorn tree branch.

It's the season that poets use to signify death or withering old age.  Shriveled and dying, I don't hear of nearly as many people who long for winter as the record-breaking number of people who long for autumn's painterly charm (and pumpkin-spiced everything) or spring's mighty rejuvenation of warmth.

But there it sits tucked between two realms of beauty, lackluster and unappreciated.

A time of "I wish it were something else," instead of, "I wish it could last for always."

Tedious as some of us may find it, is it possible that winter not only carries some hidden-from-view beauty, but that it also holds a solid purpose?

Is winter really that important?

I sought to find an answer sufficient to justify this past week of skating rink-worthy highways and wasn't disappointed.

Matthew Kronsberg provides some insight, explaining that not only does cold weather get rid of pesky bugs and pathogens, but also,

"Proper cold serves another important purpose: For perennial crops, shorter days and sustained low temperatures bring a cycle of dormancy, a deep, almost anesthetized sleep, during which growth is temporarily halted.  Measured in 'chilling hours,' this is the time when plants' energy is held in  reserve, building up for new growth ... Without sufficient chilling time, a fruit tree will generate fewer, weaker buds, limiting fruit production from day one." (grist.org, para 2-3, emphasis mine).

As it turns out, it appears that if plants don't freeze right, they won't bloom right.

Which means that a beautiful spring and a plentiful harvest--those lovely seasons that bookend this time of bitter cold--depend on winter to be biting and ugly.

And just as the world can't bloom without hardship, neither can we.

I challenge you to think for a moment about all of the people in your life whom you deem to be a rarity--a treasure in this world; a faith in humanity restored; a gem in the dust.

Think of the plentiful harvest of integrity that lay in Joseph in the Bible--following only being beaten, wrongfully imprisoned, and forgotten much of his early and young adult life.

Recall Abraham, who became the father of all nations--but only after he and his wife Sarah were bitterly barren until their very old age.

Consider Jesus who had to first undergo taunting, betrayal, torture, and a gruesome crucifixion before he rose as the great Messiah who could offer salvation to the world.

Think of the ugliness that was.  And think of the beauty that it became.

Consider all that can quietly take place during the chilling hours of your heart--ridding it of the bad and transforming it for something wonderful.

Unfortunately, our lives can't be one constant season of plenty and beauty.

Or should I say, fortunately, it can't?

For how can you learn to love the light

until you've fumbled in the dark?

How can you learn to savor a hearty meal

until you've understood the pangs of hunger?

What good is the sweet taste of water

unless your throat has ached for moisture?

What joy does having anything possess unless you've had to be without it?

For being without something you cherish can be hard.

But failing to experience unabashed joy because you lack any comparison is a tragedy.

That cold, that season of hardship--whether you're in it or you can recall it--is what the Lord uses to prepare us for the beauty of blooming and for the purpose of fruitfulness.

One can't exist without the other.

May we lie dormant in the winter air--knowing that the hardship may appear to have stolen our vibrancy on the surface, but also having full clarity that the Lord is quietly at work within.

May it be less of a time of "I wish it were something else," and more of, "I take it for what it is."

You're being readied for beauty, my friend.

And the cold?  Well...

It really shouldn't bother you anyway.

"The wilderness and the desert will be glad, and the Arabah will rejoice and blossom; like the crocus, it will blossom profusely and rejoice with rejoicing and shouts of joy." ~Isaiah 35:1-2

Cinder

There I sat in the ash.  A modern-day Cinderella with a wardrobe of crude rags.

 

I didn't use to be this way.  Look like this.  Dress like this.  Feel like this.

 

There was once a life of beauty here.  I was loved.

 

I mattered.

 

But evil burned the beauty to the ground and left me here in the cinder.

 

Cinderella.  What an appropriate title.  Belle of the burnt.  Queen of the ash.

 

I gave my identity over to the one who dressed me in rags.  I just sat there and took it.  Never thinking to fight back or that maybe there was a flaw in the logic of the one who looked on me with distaste.

 

I had heard that I wasn't worth it, and I had believed that it was true.

 

Soot for rouge and broom for majestic accessory, I allowed myself to dream of true love in the middle of the wreckage.  I longed to be rescued.  I longed to matter.

 

But then shame would remind me of where I really belonged and fanned away my dreams, as if they were a horrible stench in the air.

 

Yet a glow of hope whispered to me like a dying ember.

 

They don't know I've danced with a prince.

 

They didn't see the way I radiated when I was clothed in elegance and slippers of glass.  The way he looked at me--ME!--and chose me to be his, if for nothing more than a song.

 

He didn't see me in rags, the soot on my cheeks.  He took my hand and put a new tune in my soul, singing over me songs of beauty.

 

You are worth it.  You matter.  You are enough.

 

I thirsted for the purity and the sweetness of his words.  And the memory was enough to adorn me in the only sparkle that existed in that ash heap.

 

This time last year, I wore rags of pain and identified myself by the shame of being left for another woman.  I let someone deceive me into thinking that I wasn't enough. 

But I had not one but TWO royal dignitaries to swoop in and clothe me in beauty:

 

(1)  A son of the King (my sweet Brooks) who pledges his heart and his faithfulness to me every day.  Who waters my heart with love and confidence and pushes me to be a better woman.

 

(2) The King Himself, who first sought me from the ruin to make me restored.

 

Even in rags, I was worth searching for.  You are worth searching for.

 

And when royalty looked upon my filthy countenance and beckoned me to answer why...

 

Why are you wearing rags?

 

Because, I mumbled, I let someone else dress me.  And I let someone else tell me who I was.

 

They shook their heads and got to work.

 

They removed my rags of humiliation that were a parting gift from his affair and replaced them with threads of dignity.

 

Off went the dirty pieces of shame that told me I wasn't good enough, and in their place draped the certainty that I am good enough for a King.

 

Thrown aside were the shoes made for wallowing in the deepest pits of despair, and on went shoes made for dancing.

 

And gone was the halo of inadequacy, and instead, they crowned me with confidence.

 

Confidence that I matter.  That I am loved eternally.  That I'm worth it.  Worth dying for.

Why live in ash and cinder when there is a palace waiting for you?

 

Take off your rags, Cinderella, and let another dress you.

 

You don't belong there, despite what you've been told.

 

You were always a princess, love.  Now dress like one.

Turn the 6 Around...

I signed on the dotted line on 6/13.

It was Friday the 13th.  Hey, what better day to sign divorce papers than that?

But that date...6/13...was stuck like taffy to my thoughts.  

This date, Chels, look at it. Look, The Lord whispered. 

I'm gonna turn it all around, He whispered. 

And then, as I stared at the 6/13 that flashed in my thoughts, the six began to turn, until 180 degrees later, it stopped as a 9. 

It then read 9/13. 

I'm gonna turn it all around, Chels. 

My eyes snapped open, my eyelashes fluttering away at the fog of the dream I'd just had. 

Turn it all around? I thought. What does that mean?

I shook my head and realized how silly I was to be mulling over this. 

It means, I told myself, you need to quit eating mac and cheese before bed. 

But neatly, I folded the dream and put it securely away in the back pocket of my mind.

That was three days ago. 

I awoke early on Saturday morning to the blissful news that I'd been called off from work for the day. Woohoo! Finally a weekend day off from work, and Harlow was away for the weekend, so I was also mommy-duty free. 

Whatever will I do with myself?!

After a perfectly peaceful afternoon and early evening of leisurely buggy-less shopping around town with Brooks, the two of us headed back toward my parents' house for an intimate dinner party. 

But he took an unexpected turn just shy of my neighborhood and into Edwin Warner Park. 

It was where we had once slow danced to "Whenever You Come Around" as it repeatedly blasted from his car speakers. 

"Let's go in here for a few minutes," he said sweetly.  "I have a present to give you. But first, would you dance again with me?"

"Of course," I replied. 

After several twists and turns down the wooded road, we found a small empty pavilion and pulled over. 

He sounded love songs once more through his car, and the world stopped spinning so that we could spin on our grassy dance floor.

I was lost in the romance, in the crispness of the early September breeze, in the melody of the music. Everything else melted away.

He backed away gently, telling me to stay put while he got my present.  He quickstepped to the trunk of his car and emerged with a folded blanket.  He held up the corners and let it fall open before letting it gracefully parachute down onto the lawn.

He ushered me to have a seat on the blanket while he strolled once more to the trunk of his car, this time reappearing with a modest-sized box, carefully wrapped and topped with a pink bow.

Sitting beside me on the blanket, he handed me the box and urged me to open it.

I began to take apart the wrapping, and as the paper peeled away, I immediately knew what it was.

Months earlier, I had told him that one of my most prized possessions was my Bible.  But not just any Bible--my HCSB Bible.  It was my "push present" after giving birth to Harlow, but the loveliness associated with it had become tainted in the past year.  After all, it was engraved with my married name--and had been given to me by the one who gave me that name.

I loved the Bible but cringed every time I looked at it, so I had told Brooks that someday, I wanted the same Bible with hopefully a brand new married name.

The wrapping paper fell in shreds at my side, and my heart leapt as I saw the cover of my new Bible.

With a new last name engraved on it.

I looked up at him, my eyes brimming with joy.

"But wait!"  he quickly added.  "There's more!"

He hoisted the Bible onto my lap, and I could see that there were four pieces of paper nestled within various pages.  The bookmarks were elegantly numbered in silvery penmanship, and he explained that each tab marked a specific page he had wanted me to read.

The first tab directed me to Proverbs 31:10-31--the renowned verses that describe a godly wife and mother--and beside it, he had written, "You are the embodiment of this passage!"

I couldn't hold in the tears as he lovingly told me that he had prayed his whole life to find a Proverbs 31 woman.  He told me how he had come to believe that such a woman didn't even exist anymore until he met me.

My cries of joy splattered on the pages of my new gift, while he helped me turn to the second tab, which sat beside Mark 11:22-24 (concerning having faith to move mountains), the note reading, "My favorite passage!"

He told me how he had had to believe that if that passage were true, that he would have to trust that God would bring a Proverbs 31 woman into his life.

The third tab was tucked in Philippians 4:4-7, which he noted was the passage of Scripture that spawned the Brentwood Baptist sermon about joy on the day we met.

And tab number four rewound me to the very front of the Bible, where he had filled out the first page.

It read:

Presented to
Chelsea Kathryn Parker
by
Brooks Edward Parker
on
September 13, 2014
(the day of our engagement)

I looked at the parenthetical phrase and whipped my head up to look him in the eye.

WHAT?! I said with the most irreverant tone.

He smiled knowingly and replied, "I think we should talk."

I began to sob as he told me how he didn't feel as though he needed a big production for this moment, since God had already made something extraordinary out of all of the ordinary moments of his life since we had met.

He told me how much he loved me and then asked me if I could stand.

He helped me up and dropped to one knee.

"You've already made me the happiest man in the world, so all that's left to do is to ask you,

Will you be my wife?"

I took his chin in my hand, looked in those blue eyes and whispered through a full smile,

Yes!

**More surprises were to come, as he had arranged for a photographer to hide in the bushes to capture the proposal and had our parents and his brother and sister-in-law to have a surprise engagement celebration for us back at the house!**

In the previous year, I had been through absolute hell. But the Lord turned what happened on 6/13 around on 9/13.

I had lived a nightmare, and now God has blessed me with a divinely crafted fairy tale.

When He turned the "6" around, He turned it all around.

Do you believe it yet??  Do you see yet how He can work beauty even in the ashes?

He turned me around.  My life around.

He can turn you around.

He can turn anything around.

Oh happy day, friends!!