Adorable fabric bunnies, sewed by me. Tutorial I followed here.

I’ve been hanging out with my little ones in our garden in the morning and the afternoon lately. I love things that are so naturally entertaining and with three children I haven’t found anything that quite compares to sunshine, sand, water and imaginative play.

As I notice everything starting to bloom and take off in my kids garden it’s easy to also notice my kids changing and blooming this Spring. One is a new walker, one is finishing out preschool and one is mastering multiplication.

I like to think I’m also blossoming as a person; trying new things and growing, serving, exploring, challenging myself to be better but sometimes we just feel stuck without visible progress.

I’m currently coming out of a winter of sorts, in which I have been just surviving and surely not blossoming as in a Spring season. With a now 15 month old, third child, I’m beginning to resurface the winter of nursing, holding, shuffling schedules, appointments, children’s activities, homework, preschool, dinners, lunches, full time mama bearing all day everyday.

Finding our step as mothers, wives, professionals, is hard and often we are in search of our Spring. When will I get it all together? When will I mark off my daily list? When will I get that promotion? Get married? That house? A baby? I was in the thick of this mired thought this past year, feeling like my life was constantly on a daily repeat.

It wasn’t until the other day that God finally showed me what he had been teaching me in this long winter season. It was in my garden, that I am typing in now, where I noticed– Spring. Like all of the plants around me, I was in winter and I didn’t know how long it would last.

I had bought a Jasmine vine this past winter to grow up a piece of lattice in the garden. I have secretly always loved the look of towering vines and fragrant flowers would be an amazing compliment to the space. So I went for it and bought this vine I knew nothing about.

I had been faithfully taking care of my garden and this vine all winter not knowing if it would take off. I was watering one day when I noticed it— the first white flower, bloom of Jasmine! I instinctively, got really excited and had to photograph it. I wasn’t even really sure why I was so excited I just wanted to remember this small white flower.

Shortly after this bloom, I took my first solo trip with all three kids. I needed to see my sister as she had just been blessed with twins. I honestly was freaked out. Driving three hours away from home, responsible for the most precious gifts that both my husband and I had ever been given. What if there was an accident or car trouble? Alone, with three children. The mere logistics of one of them needing to go to the bathroom along the way are concerning. Needless to say, I really wanted to see those teeny tiny baby girls.

Luckily, there were no hijackings, no spontaneous flus or otherwise terrible things that happened; we did have to pull over and pee on the side of the road once but I considered it minor in the grand scheme of this solo trip. And here’s the thing, this is when I unknowingly entered Spring. I had become a mom of three over a year prior but I had just crossed the threshold of confidence and that changed everything. I now felt like a secure mother of three not an apprentice. 

What I learned was that we often don’t know how long our winter will last, and it goes on so dang long we forget it’s a season, we mistake it for “the rest of our life”. The Jasmine vine is now representative of my confidence as a mother and a gardener. It bloomed, I didn’t think it would and out of the blue it did. I just kept faithfully tending it. In the same way, we faithfully tend to our children, our jobs, our relationships and wait for Spring.

Thankfully, my Spring has begun and I am now entering into a new season of motherhood, one in which I am now an experienced mother of three. I can now move forward with confidence that the seasons in everything will inevitably change. Spring is such a lovely reminder though, that the weight of winter does eventually lift and along comes better weather. A time of newness, a time of blossoming a time to find our step again as we have so many times.