Allowing Joy

Every year, sometime during the week of my birthday, I put my dahlia tubers in the ground. It’s an easy way for me to remember when to do this work, and I need all the easy reminders I can get. Seasons bring their markers of change and I’ve seen the trillium popping out of the dark woods, felt the sun warming me, and I’ve chosen the cake I want. It’s almost time.

I have a new essay up at The Cultivating Project this week, about dahlias, joy, grief and timing. I hope you’ll click over and read it, and maybe consider your own season and the ill-timed events that shape you. We can flourish together, friends.

Like apple trees that get antsy on the first warm day and bust out a smattering of blossoms, then freeze the following week, my timing is not always right. But that tree doesn’t die. It might miss a season of harvest, but if it is otherwise healthy it will live to bloom again.

I’m convinced a season of darkness is essential for my health, as odd as it sounds and as bad as the timing is. I don’t love it, but all of nature and Christ Himself show me a life in cycles: waking and sleeping, springtime and harvest, death and resurrection. Remnants from each cycle carry over to the next, but eventually, finally, eternally at last, joy is the victor. That’s the best way I can imagine it—this world, inverted.