What's Saving My {Spring} Life

Or a season awakening

Welcome. In case you’re new here, I’m Caitlin, a writer of all sorts of things—fiction, life, the occasional poem—but last year on The Time Given I often shared how I was spending my days amidst grief, infertility, and midlife. Sometimes it was slow stories inspired by my daily life, other times it was prayers & poetry. Then I found myself quiet as life shifted in a big way. I’m hoping as 2025 progresses, I’ll start working out what sort of space I want The Time Given to be. Until then, join me for a little life update today, and stick around as I continue writing about home, hobbies, garden spaces, and the goodness of the Lord.

Golden hour at The Limberlost

As the temperatures rise this week for an out-of-sorts heat wave, I’m reveling in the long spring we’ve had here in the Midwest. The weeks have been beautiful as I’ve watched the crocuses, then the daffodils, then the tulips bloom lingering long past their days.

Over the weeks, the green has filtered in, trees sprouting slowly, sun shimmering through the leaves like a kaleidoscope.

I have not wasted this long season. I walked among the fire-blooming azaelas in the south, observed the first of the sandhill cranes in their migration, and harvested spinach in the early mornings, breathing deeply of the Lord’s goodness.

While autumn has long been my favorite season, I’m beginning to wonder if its bookend sister has been rooted deep in my soul only waiting for me to notice her.

In the Midwest, it’s rare to have such a long spring. Often, winter lingers into March or occasionally April, then after a week of two of springlike weather, summer arrives long before her solstice.

But this year, Spring showed her face in March, slowly unraveling her story week by week. I planted an early greens garden, have been mowing my yard for weeks, and just as the early flowers disappeared, new ones arrived, right on time to continue her dance.

I think perhaps the knowledge of our impending move¹ has sat with me in this season in more ways than I could imagine. For after a cold, hard winter, spring never fails to arrive—and for years my own life has felt like one winter bleeding into the next. A pre-Aslan Narnian world. All grief and no joy.

And Y E T. The death of a long winter, of a dream once hoped for, has given way to newness.

See, I am doing a new thing!
Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the wilderness
and streams in the wasteland.

-Isaiah 43:19

While I’m not sure what life will look like post our move and my leaving the classroom, I am eager. This next season of life just feels like Spring.

But beyond the beauty of these long, held weeks, so many others things have been ushering me to search for joy. And so friends, here’s a little round up of the things that are saving my life this season.²

A few things saving my life this spring are:

• Surprise visits to North Carolina. While I had planned to spend my spring break in our new home, I ended up visiting for a surprise long weekend as I was invited for a job interview. The position is still pending, but I was able to experience the beautiful and abundant azaelas and dogwoods blooming in our new neighborhood. It was an unexpected joy that I am very much looking forward to next Spring especially as I decide what to plant in our own yard.

• Packing up my classroom. I’ve been a public school teacher for eleven years, all of those a fight of am I in the right vocation. But as most of life is teaching me—it was the right space for the season. Packing—though I have so much stuff—has made me remember the joy I tried to infuse in my classes while also rediscovering the thing I am most passionate about—story.

• Sunny & Gizmo. I mean, who hasn’t been watching the Big Bear Bald Eagle nest cam, watching these eaglets grow? Though they’re near fledging, there’s still time to watch. Yesterday Sunny was very curious about the camera, and even nibbling at the metal poll! I highly recommend reading the eagle stories as well.

• Daily walks. Some days they are longer than others, and this month I’ve been walking with a friend, but the daily movement does wonders for my brain. I’m a former runner who has fallen in love with the slow pace of walking my neighborhood.

• The Limberlost. A few weeks ago I visited The Limberlost Swamp in Geneva, IN with my mom. Her favorite books as a kid were Freckles and The Girl of the Limberlost by author and naturalist Gene Stratton-Porter. While I never read them as a young girl because fantasy was more my thing, I read them a few years ago as inspiration for a spooky story I wrote for an anthology submission. After reading the stories, I knew I had to visit the Limberlost with my mom before I left the Midwest, and it did not disappoint. We had a wonderful weekend of nature and mother-daughter time. Though the story I wrote was ultimately rejected, I still hold it close and now after our weekend I think I might just expand it into a novel!

• A week-long Harry Potter movie marathon. I’ve taught a majority of seniors for the last five years, and at our school they graduate early. Which means, I usually have about a week & a half of empty hours to plan and prep for the next year. Since my fall looks very different this year, I’ve spent the time packing up my classroom with Harry Potter on in the background. I’m more of a books than movie girl, but after visiting The Wizarding World, the movies hit differently. I came into teaching an HP fanatic, my classroom always having been decorated in an Hogwarts inspired theme, and so it seems fitting to leave watching one movie a day.

• A new idea for writing—I feel like I have more ideas than I know what to do with, but this semester as my brain frees itself up from work, it feels like my creative juices are really flowing. I have the inklings of a larger, nonfiction project starting to brew—something that I could maybe focus on this next year since I’m not teaching, but also as a lead up to my 40th birthday. I don’t know if it’s feasible, but it’s there and I’m letting it simmer for now.

• A small garden. We’re taking my raised beds with us to North Carolina, and since we’re moving right at the start of summer harvest, I planted an early garden in March—mostly cold tolerant greens—and even if it isn’t the kitchen garden of my dreams, digging in the dirt has been lovely.

• Spotting a scarlet tanager. Our last day at the Limberlost, we hiked through Loblolly Marsh, and in the canopy of the trees I spotted a breeding male scarlet tanager. I’m newly into birding—but this—this is one of the birds to spot. It’s often hard because they hang out high in the canopy hidden by leaves, but as we visited in early spring, the trees weren’t full yet. His color was so vibrant, and weeks later I’m still sitting in the joy of simply standing there watching him exist.

What’s been saving your life this spring season, friends? Share your joys and your good in the comments (or even the hard…because there’s space for that, too.)

I’m Caitlin, a writer, hobbyist, and creative who believes in the power of story, and that things like nature, wonder, faith, grief, hope, and art are worth our time and attention. I write stories for young readers centered around the themes of grief, belonging, loss, hope, and found families, which I share in my newsletter Lost in Story, while also exploring them in my own life here on The Time Given. My writing here will always be free to read, but it does take time and heart space to write. Please consider supporting the work I do by giving a one-time or monthly donation, or by subscribing to my weekly writing.

1. If you’re new here, I shared about our upcoming move in my winter edition.

2. If you’re unfamiliar with a ‘what’s saving my life list’ it’s a practice I’ve borrowed from Emily P. Freeman, and a way to reflect on my seasons with joy.