When I was small, I walked down our long lane at the farm to catch the bus on the big gravel road every morning. Every spring, I waited for the icy puddles to emerge from the snow banks. I walked down the lane in my rubber boots, gently pressing on the thin ice to expose the bubbles and water below. More than three decades later, I still love these icy puddles now, fresh each morning in these early spring days. And like most things in nature, there is an application for my soul.

Ice forms a hard protective layer over water, protecting what lies beneath it from the cold. In the darkest winter days, the ice is solid for months, unyielding. But in the spring, when new life is emerging, the ice thins with sunlight and warmth. It melts and freezes, again and again, until it is warm enough for the water beneath to sink into the ground, or lift into the air.

The most difficult and tender places in me cannot handle being exposed to brutal conditions. I build solid walls around those places to protect them and myself. I only acknowledge those space in the safest conditions.

After a long remission, PTSD broke through my walls this winter, and my body reminded me that our experiences are coded into our cells. I wrestled with some nightmares, struggled with exhaustion and brain fog, faced down my irritability and anger. Honesty and rest, therapy and accommodations, listening and tears. The treatment is a miracle, really.

Just like the puddles, ice forms over the tender places in my soul as a natural protective layer. And when a spring season comes, the Spirit warms me up to prepare me for new growth. The wounded places get a sort of freeze’n’thaw exposure therapy to make me aware that the damn in no longer needed.

I need some convincing, most of the time. Healing usually shows up at such an inconvenient time. When work is demanding. When my kids need more of me. When I just want summer to be here already.

And then I have to remember the joy of my childhood rubber boots. It is such a messy miracle that the winter melts into spring. That water lays on soil and roots and rocks trace art beneath my feet, that water and bubbles get trapped between fragile crystals of ice.

Some of the frozen puddles, clear and thick, will still hold my full weight. I could jump and be held if I dared to risk the fall. Some of them are white and frosty, with long rectangular wedges of ridged ice.  Some bend beneath my toes pressing through the boots, flexing up and down, leaking colds mini rivers from the edges.

It gives me such pure joy to marvel at the ice in the puddles, to lose myself in exploring the micro-universe, to delightedly smash the ice through. And this can be true also in my soul.

Something is emerging in all this freezing and melting in my soul. There is cool water and trapped air just begging to get out, along with the flood of tears. After months or years of holding my breath, there is such relief in breathing easier. And in this short season that is no longer winter but not yet fully spring, if I need the ice, it will refreeze in the morning.

The landscape of my soul is etched with the footprints of seasons’ passed, and preparing itself for the ones to come. It is dynamic and alive, in constant evolution, being what it is now and becoming something new.

If only I can forget for a few minutes my fear of getting dirty or wet, my adult inhibitions of pretending that 20 minutes in the puddles could every be a “waste of time.” Then, I can put on splash pants and boots, leave my watch at home, and muck around for a delightful long while with the puddles in my soul. I just might find the Spirit there. What could be more fun?