March is a tough month for our family.
March should be a happy month. Winter is over. Spring is coming. Aslan is on the move. Easter, the best holiday of the year, looms on the holiday calendar. I should be filled with hope and happiness.
Halfway through the month, however, I wonder why I feel blah and sad.
With yet another death in our family this past week, I remember why March is my sad month, Aunt Charlotte now makes the sixth family member or close friend who has left this earth in March, more than three times as many as any other month. While I’m confident those who believe in the power of Jesus now reside with Him in Heaven, my month is full of funeral memories and wistful longings that those special people I love were still here.
It’s more than that.
March is a month of delayed gratification. The month doesn’t always roar in like a lion. It drifts into the calendar year, drab and brown, the fallow time between snow and leafy green. Clouds of gray replace the crisp blue skies of winter days. And then, in some areas where we’ve lived, there’s the wind. Constant wind. I don’t like wind. It doesn’t help my mood.
So even before Special Person #6 left this earth, I was not looking forward to March. Determined to not let the blahs rule, I decided it was time to change my perspective.
What’s so good about the month of March?
An email recipe newsletter gave me a happy March memory – cabbage and corned beef. Yum! Oh yes. St Patrick’s Day. I love St Patrick’s day. It’s a holiday to celebrate world missions because God used St Patrick to transform Ireland with the gospel message.
More St. Patrick Day articles:
- Three Ways to Celebrate St Patrick’s Day
- St Patrick’s Day: A Great Day to Celebrate Global Missions
- The Bonfires of Beltane: An Interview With Mark Fisher
What else happens in March?
I asked my Facebook friends: What does March mean to you? Their list reminded me of so much I love about the month of March.
- Corned beef and cabbage (someone else likes it too!)
- Birthdays
- The coming birth of a first grandchild (Why, me too!)
- Return of the robin
- The first killdeer sighting
- Time to plant flowers and vegetable seedlings
- Redbud trees
- Spring break
- Drinking morning coffee on backyard porches (that’s from my sister in Arizona!)
- Green grass
- Springtime asparagus and strawberries
- Daffodils, pansies, and crocuses
- Farm babies
- The coming of Easter
(This looks like a great recipe for making Corned Beef and Cabbage in your electric pressure cooker.)
Oh, so much to celebrate! As the days of March ease and, at times, lurch from winter to spring, so my spirits shift from blah to blessed.
It’s all in where I choose to focus.
What do I do with my lingering grief? While I miss those who have gone before me, I look at their leaving this way. March is a perfect month to depart for their Heavenly Home. They’ll spend their first Easter with the Lord who redeemed their lives from the grave and waits to bestow on them His gift of eternal spring. If I want the very best for them – and I do – then how could I possibly want anything different for them than dancing the streets of Heaven.
March can become a month of grateful memories of some very special people whom God has used to have tremendous impact on me and mold me into the person I am today. Perhaps I should allow March to call me to a renewed commitment to imitate the best of each of those precious people.
Do you have a certain month that seems more blah than the rest? What else does that month mean to you? If you can’t think of anything, take a poll of your friends. Create new meaning that changes your perspective and parts the clouds to let the sun shine once again.
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