It’s all about to start. Conference season, lecture season, tour season. In the past few days while organizing my talks, searching for lanyards and badges, retrieving adapters and connectors (plus the right clothing for different climes), I’ve had one pressing “seasonal” question badgering my mind: “Where in the world am I going to get the energy for all that’s coming up?”
I know the answer, although yesterday morning brought an unexpected reminder. In the cold drizzle, packing up the car to leave the house, I turned my head and spotted two small bushes near the edge of the garage. Instead of dull winter leaves, I found a blanket of pink draped before me. Pow! When did that happen?
Overnight, apparently. Even with seemingly endless cold, grey days, two camellia bushes had blossomed! And they sported not just a few tentative blooms, but a cascade of perky rose-coral circles covering both shrubs.
This is our first spring since moving to our new house to North Carolina. We don’t know exactly what will sprout up in our big semi-wooded yard. But we know it will be dramatic, particularly when compared to the subtle southwest flora at our North Central Texas ranch (noted exception: Bluebonnets and Indian Paintbrush).
I’m not really a plant person, although I try. But nature never fails to remind us of spiritual truths. In this case, watching spring burst forth from the mist reminds me that we, too, can be filled with zest at precisely those times when things seem the grimmest.
My mother pounded this truth into me. She’d hear my complaints and look hard at me. “Of course you’re tired (dismayed, discouraged, stymied). You’re forgetting where your energy comes from.” Throughout a challenging life, she had learned that our true source of energy is not dependent on us. Our true energy is renewable because it comes from God.
Despite the difficulty, whether it be family circumstances, oppressive amounts of work, personal doubts and disappointments, or even physical challenges, we can be flooded with a renewal of our energy if we remember where that energy comes from. What a liberating truth.
And how counter to the story usually set before our eyes. The world says that our energy is dependent on everything from logistics and mood to nutrition and genetics. Of course one should rest properly, dress warmly (hats, always hats!), and eat as well as possible. And certainly illnesses and physical challenges cause many people to struggle. But the truth still holds.
Particularly in the work I do now, I travel often with people whose lives have been impacted by drastic circumstances or severe physical challenges. It is not easy for them to join the Smithsonian tours. Yet I find that they sometimes outpace far younger and healthier travelers who are free of such complaints. Their positive energies put many of us to shame, even if they have to adjust certain aspects of a demanding itinerary.
When I’m out on tours, challenges involve long days of travel or making it up to the top of rocky stairs leading to a castle. In daily life, though, our challenges are more likely to involve lists of mundane tasks, tight schedules, untended piles of papers, mounds of laundry, and the gnawing worry that we’re getting “nowhere.”
My mother didn’t wax poetic to say things like “energy is just like spring when the clouds lift and everything flowers.” Instead she would have said, “You are wrong to think that energy comes from your own, limited human self. It is a Divine gift. It’s unlimited and renewable.”
Energy, inspiration, imagination, determination—these are all God’s gifts. From the grey skies and cold earth, they rise like a fully formed tapestry of blossoms.
But they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint. —Isaiah 40:31
A timely word indeed. Thank you.