Spring is time for a fresh look

Kaity Holtman

We’re well into springtime, but as flowers are blooming and trees are budding, it’s really starting to feel like spring.

For now, we all know how Missouri can be. It could be winter again tomorrow.

Anyway, we have mowed our swamp – I mean, yard – twice now, and I know we’re behind some of our neighbors.

I am starting to plan out flowers to plant in different spots – something I didn’t do much of last year with a newborn to take care of. I’m hoping he’ll be helpful in watering them with me this summer.

Spring is my favorite time of year.

I have tried to make fall my favorite because it’s fun to decorate, and I like the smells and everything covered in pumpkin.

But at the end of the day, the feeling spring brings is what I enjoy the most.

Easter Sunday is always the perfect time to look around with a fresh perspective.

We celebrate that Jesus died for our sins and rose from the dead. We celebrate that we are forgiven and so incredibly loved.

And the sermons at church and the videos making their way across social media remind us that because of Him, we can always start over. We can put the bad of yesterday behind us and move forward with better intentions.

We’re not perfect, but that’s why He is. But we can sure try to live in His image.

And as we look around at the growing plants and the new baby calves, even at our little one celebrating his first Easter, and it becomes so easy to visualize the miracles God gives us.

Sam enjoyed picking up Easter eggs, being outside, and spending time with all of his loving family members.

Springtime is the time for new and renewed.

Our priest at Easter Vigil mass talked about how important it is to “stop and smell the roses” this time of year.

And he’s right. It’s important to slow down a little and look around.

We get so caught up in our busy, go-go-go lives, that it’s so easy to just keep going – almost like a rock rolling down a hill.

And sometimes it takes a tree standing in our way to stop us in our paths. That’s not always the most convenient, but usually we end up appreciating it in the long run.

That’s part of what I love about rural America. There are plenty of trees in our paths.

Big, beautiful, sturdy trees full of life lessons and analogies.

As farmers start to get into their fields to plant corn, they have a lot of time alone in their tractors to think and reflect on life.

And those farmers are responsible for cultivating hundreds of thousands of acres of new life each and every spring.

That’s another example of why a slower life in rural Missouri is so beneficial. We see life, from beginning, through full growth, to the end, over and over and over again.

And seeing that cycle of life makes us appreciate life that much more.

Kaity Holtman is the Agriculture Editor for the Maryville Daily Forum.