A beautiful little tree lives outside the picture window in my bedroom. In early January, when the Virginia winter pulled one of its identity-crisis weeks and temperatures reached 70, tiny pink blossoms formed on my little tree’s branches, and I wondered if she was a winter-blooming tree. I am notoriously clueless about gardening, and my yard has surprised me repeatedly these past six months as various flowering plants have appeared in unexpected places—the fruit of the previous owners’ labor and design. I took pictures of a pink sunset that January week, loving how it matched my little tree’s new blossoms.

But then the cold snapped back into its rightful place, and I sadly watched my little tree’s blossoms shrivel and die. Soon her branches were as bare as they had been in December, and she blended in with the other forlorn-looking trees in my yard—still beautifully intricate in their barrenness but devoid of color.

This week, another false spring appeared as we enjoyed four days in the 70s! Windows flew open, small piles of sand accumulated on the family room floor beside discarded shoes and socks, and a mosquito even joined us for bedtime stories (where he met his tragic but necessary demise). By the week’s end, I again glimpsed pink blossoms on my little tree’s branches, slightly fuller and brighter than the last time she bloomed. I gazed at them a little more cautiously this time, wondering if they would outlast the cold that had already returned.

I empathize greatly with my confused little tree—wanting to bloom and display the color hidden inside her—but finding her attempts premature and short-lived. I, too, feel eager to bloom—to emerge from my winter season where some things in my life have had to die and be cut away for new life to blossom.

Healing from the loss of yourself and anything you have loved is a messy, slow process. Long, cold, grey days give way to bright, encouraging, warm days. You peek out and see the sun and feel the warmth, so you step out into it and run unencumbered, tasting joy and freedom and loving it! But with no warning, you find yourself back in hibernation listening to the cold rain beat on your window pane, wondering if spring will ever come.

There are so many fast-track ways to “recover” from loss:  party it away; enter a rebound relationship; overwork, overbook, overeat, or overspend; relocate; medicate; serve yourself to death. But filling a void has a much different effect than experiencing healing transformation. It is tempting to choose the fillers because they numb the pain and let us escape the issues and problems that caused it in the first place. But submitting to the process of feeling the pain, grieving it, and being transformed by it propels you to a place so much richer than the one you left.

One of the many reminders that has hung on my little corkboard for the past year is a quote by Joseph Garlington that says, “God closes one door and opens another, but it is hell in the hallway.”

Yep. That pretty much sums it up. It’s hell to be in the middle of transformation. If we could ask the butterfly how the chrysalis feels, she would probably say it feels like you are dying.  That it is dark and claustrophobic and restrictive and that time moves ever so slowly. It’s lonely in there, and it’s an act of total submission to the Creator who promises that He sits on the throne and is “making everything new!” (Revelation 21:5a, ESV)

Like the little tree outside my picture window, I have found the transformation process confusing. Sunny, warm days full of peace and joy and hope bring glimpses of the brightly colored blossoms God is restoring to my life. But then an unexpected cold snap hits, and they all fall to the ground as I realize it isn’t quite spring yet. There are unhealed places in me that He hasn’t touched yet. And it feels like failure.

On one of those cold-snap days, a friend dropped a folded piece of paper into my Bible bag at church. When I discovered it later, sitting in my car in the Starbucks parking lot (where else?), I drank in Natasha Metzler’s words eagerly and silently. When I got to the end, I gasped aloud as I read:

“Nobody makes it through life unscathed by sorrow, and we all feel the scraping sadness at times. And being healed doesn’t mean we’re 100% okay with what’s happening in life. No, no. Being healed means learning to feel all the sadness and all the happy when it comes, all the while knowing that our shalom, our peace and wholeness, is settled deep. It won’t move, no matter what we’re feeling. We’re promised in Philippians 4:7 that the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. This means we don’t have to understand everything. Not the loss, not the sorrow, not the lack. We can just know, deep down, that we are safe, even when life hurts. Today, I am feeling 99.8% okay. And as it turns out—that’s enough. Because even though I don’t understand it all, there is a truth that goes far beyond my feelings—and it says that I am whole, even with a thread of sorrow stitched through my my life.”[1]

Through her words, I realized that it’s okay to be confused like the little tree. It’s okay to blossom one day and be barren the next. That even as He transforms and heals me, I will have threads of sorrow and grief woven into my being. And that even after extended weeks of spring and summer, fall and winter will come again. But as long as I submit to the process, avoid the “easy fixes,” willingly feel the sunshine AND the cold snaps, I WILL blossom…again and again…in His time.

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die…a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance…a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away…a time to keep silence, and a time to speak…He has made everything beautiful in its time.” (Ecclesiastes 3:1-2, 3a-4, 5, 7b, 11a, ESV)

[1] “When You’re 99.8% Okay.” by Natasha Metzler