Is it to early to pray for Spring? I know it’s just January. But I am tired and exhausted with winter and Omicron. The thought of Spring seems soothing. I saw yesterday on New York Times, that parents with kids under 5 are in despair. The stress of the pandemic has brought many of us to our breaking point. Our children under 5 cannot become vaccinated. Omicron is surging along unperturbed. Meanwhile, every time I drop my kids under 5, I keep wondering if I am sane or insane for letting them live as if Omicron is not around the corner. Everyone at this point knows someone that had gotten the virus. And Omicron doesn’t really care. Then I looked outside my house this morning. I looked as saw black birds flocking around. It’s been awhile since I looked intently at nature and seeing these birds this morning helped me remember to live, helped me crave for Spring. The bipolar nature of weather in Saint Louis doesn’t help, but at this point the thought of birds and flowers, helped me get through feelings of exhaustion. It also inspired this little thing to keep that I wrote for myself this morning.

I keep rising again, yet things on my mind, pull me down, dragging me deep, down into the ocean foundation, the despair, failures, the self-doubt, all linger like a fortress of solid rock, pulling me down.

I keep avoiding again, the magic, the love, burrowed deep into words that become doors, with vision among stars, words that lead to openings for healing, gifts of restoration, many I crave right now, to help me remember why all this began.

Then I remember to bloom like flowers. Black birds are all round. They see plants transitioning into flowers. I see myself initiating my flowering again. The tips of myself, becoming clusters of flowers again. Together, we are becoming a collection of meristems, generating a collection of undifferentiated cells, that slowly become organs within unpredictable environments again.

Now, I choose to keep protecting all that makes us fragile. Attracting things that help us reproduce. Generating seeds that helps us grow. All of us together, in our bright colors, keep rising again, keep coming into our bloom again.