Repent Come Spring

My first journal entry about Spring.

I’m currently writing a novel about the absence of light and what life would look like with no God. This is partially because it feels like sometimes my mind lacks that narrative, (of God and light) and partially because my preacher boy brother told me that all that Hell is, is the absence of God. And that really stuck with me. But now, I wonder, if the absence of God is fire and brimstone, is God lost in the cold? And when it’s Winter, will I find God through fur coats and fuzzy socks? Through warm vanilla milk and 100% cotton? But then Spring rolls around, and with it, the rainbow, and with it, hope. Hope in heaven, because I hiked to the top of a mountain and saw how limitless it all looked. Hope in God because the trees came back to life, the flowers rose again, so maybe God did too. And maybe that means there’s hope for me to be reborn as well. Because I’ve dunked my body in cold water twice now, once in a hole in the ground, and once in the ocean. I let salty water consume me, and spit me out reborn. I let prayers be washed over me and waves exfoliate sin off my skin. Each time though, I never felt new. I knew there was too much I didn’t know, and too many mistakes I didn’t make yet, and so while I should’ve been smiling and crying tears of joy, I was terrified of dunking my head in the water and shouting to the world that I was a disciple. But then it’s Spring, and I’m thinking that Spring is the best time to repent because that’s when God shows his rainbow. That’s when dead things come back to life. And I died when I sinned. And I’m repenting now that it’s Spring. Because when it’s Summer, those flowers, they wither with the heat. They die; I see the lines of the heat waves in the air, I feel perspiration and irritation, and all I really ever wanted was to get in the same ocean I was baptized in. But when I get into the ocean with fresh sin, and the ocean smells my fingers and notices I haven’t touched a Bible in months, the water around me turns lukewarm. Because that’s who I am. Lukewarm. And God spews me out his mouth like he said he would and I begin to feel the heat. And it’s 110 degrees. And all I can think about is how it’s 110 degrees and God, his disciples, and his angels, are still on the Earth. What will it feel like when they’re gone? I dunk my head underwater, trying to create a self repentance ritual. But it’s not Spring, so I can’t truly repent, can I? Summer is when things die, so I try to let the sin in me scream violently and hopefully experience its own Hell. And Winter is when they’re buried, so I’ve been trying to let the old me freeze under God’s eye, and save me from the summer heat by putting out that fire on my back and laying in the snow. Maybe, now that it’s spring, I will be reborn; maybe get another chance. Maybe I’ll even dunk my head a third time. I hear the third times the charm.