I have this quote on a chalkboard in my house that says, “No matter how long the winter, spring is soon to follow.”
Baloney.
This winter is never going to end. I looked at the forecast this morning and saw that we could have a significant accumulation of snow tomorrow. It’s currently 26 degrees outside. It’s like I’m living in Narnia before Aslan returns, or Arendelle when Elsa is super angry.
Please don’t tell me that it could be worse, that I could live in Minnesota where they just got feet of snow. I know, but I don’t really care. This is bad enough.
I know I am being pouty and dramatic, but I blame the weather for that. This never ending middle season is the pits.
This in between, waiting time is sometimes referred to as liminal space. Liminal comes from a Latin word that means “threshold,” and it represents the place between. It’s the time when you have left what you know, what is safe and familiar, and committed to beginning something new. But the something new hasn’t started yet. It’s the three days in the grave between the death and resurrection.
It’s setting sail from the shores of home and floating in the open sea with no land in sight. It’s giving up an old way of relating and having no idea what a new way will look like it. It’s knowing that it’s April and spring always comes, but it is freezing cold and snow is in the forecast.
Liminal space is awkward and unfamiliar and uncomfortable. Sometimes it is downright painful. It’s a void of an unknown shape. And, it is where all growth and transformation take place. We can never grow and change if we don’t let go of what we were so that we can become who we were made to be.
Last night my two-year-old nephew was jumping off the entertainment center into my dad’s arms. My dad would put him up and he would stretch up to the ceiling and fling his body into grandpa’s arms. The liminal space was the space between the jump and the catching, the free fall. If he never took the leap, he would never experience the joy of being caught.
We need the liminal space to feel the joy of new creation. We need the freedom and growth and transformation it offers. We need the unknown to bring us to the known.
I am a person who loves security and predictability. I like feeling safe. But I am learning that if I never stretch up to the sky and fling myself forward, I will never experience the joy of being caught. I am learning that if I don’t allow myself the dark days of uncertainty and unknown, I will never reach the shores of resurrection and new life.
I want transformation. I want growth. I want to see tulips bursting from the ground, feel the warmth on my skin, and breath the new birth of spring.
Those desires are some of the truest things about me, even truer than my affinity for safety.
And so I wait. I bundle up against the cold, and breathe deep of the sharp air. I feel the icy snow hit my face and I wait. I wait because we don’t always get to choose how long we are in the liminal space.
But if we keep our arms outstretched for the one waiting to catch us, if we keep our eyes peeled for the shores of a new land, we can trust that the liminal space will lead us to the transformation and growth we are yearning for.
Spring will come.