Simply in the Springing of the Year

I found A Prayer in Spring, by Robert Frost while looking for a prayer to begin my meeting yesterday. This spring has been absolutely beautiful especially the flowering trees, they are exquisite. I wanted a prayer to celebrate this remarkable spring.

I liked the poem as I really felt it speaks to me at this point in my adoption journey. I'm so focused on getting to Kazakhstan and becoming a Mommy that I'm not really living today, enjoying what I am doing now. I need to remind myself to stay in the moment.

The first stanza says to 'give us pleasure in the flowers to-day; and give us not to think of far away as the uncertain harvest; keep us here all simply in the springing of the year'. Isn't that what we tend to do when we are waiting. We think of bringing the baby home, being a mom, sleepless nights, introducing our child to friends and family, all those things that define parenthood, a dream for so many years.

I once said to my friend Megan, who hopes to travel with me to Kazakhstan, not to put her life on hold waiting to hear when I'll travel. And putting my life on hold is how I have been living. It is so hard to live a month at a time, not being able to agree to doing things because you might get the call. Okay, I'll be truthful, sometimes I even resent this process because I figure I could be doing so many other things with my time and money. But luckily I get to spend some wonderful quality time with my friends and their children, and it reminds me the goal is so worthwhile.

But I'm going to try to stay in the moment as I wait, to enjoy each and every day and not feel like my life is too much on hold.

A Prayer in Spring by Robert Frost

Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers to-day;
And give us not to think of far away
As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
All simply in the springing of the year.

Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white,
Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night;
And make us happy in the happy bees,
The swarm dilating round the perfect trees.

And make us happy in the darting bird
That suddenly above the bees is heard,
The meteor that thrusts in with needle bill,
And off a blossom in mid air stands still.

For this is love and nothing else is love,
The which it is reserved for God above
To sanctify to what far ends He will,
But which it only needs that we fulfil.