Snowdrops as far as the eye can see - down to the Bybrook. We've often walked along this path to Long Dean and Castle Combe over the past 25 years; some years there's hardly any white and green, some years there are masses of snowdrops. This afternoon: one of the best displays for a very long time.

Here is what I posted on this blog, just over two years ago - three weeks after I saw my mother run over and crushed by an out-of-control car; three weeks into what was to prove to be a long descent into PTSS and depression:

October 2010 Three weeks after The Day

There will be snowdrops again. There will be snowdrops again. I have to believe it. One day soon, the tiny tips will push through, struggling, light seeking, upward bound. First, there will be snow. Frost and freeze. Rain. Anything the elements can throw on a winter’s day. A test of patience, hope, belief. But for now, the bulb lies cold, deeply hidden, dormant.

So lies my soul.

A corpse, buried in winter snow. Buried within my cold cold body. Iced from within. I can see it from above, the rectangle of transparent ice surrounding all that is me.

It is hard to hear you through the ice. Impossible to reach out, touch you, feel your well-meant hug. This ice is brittle, sharp, so-very-cold. It forms a barrier.

Maybe that is my protection, for should the thaw come too soon I would feel too much.

So I will believe that snowdrops will come again. And one day One day My snowdrop soul will grow again a tiny tip of life.

For as [surely as] the earth brings forth its shoots, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring forth, so [surely] the Lord God will cause rightness and justice and praise to spring forth before all the nations [through the self-fulfilling power of His word].

Snowdrop (n): A.D. Miller

1. An early-flowering bulbous plant, having a white pendent flower

2. Moscow slang. A corpse that lies buried or hidden in the winter snows, emerging only in the thaw.

* * * *

And now, two and a third years later, the thaw is well and truly here; I can feel - too much sometimes, too deeply occasionally.

But I can feel. Above all, I can feel God's love.

Last week, a dear girl prayed for me. I had gone forward for prayer ministry, hoping for a mature, well-practiced pray-er. Inwardly I cringed as a sweet faced young girl approached me - what could she know of my what and where and when.

Lord forgive me.

Lord You work through whom You chose - not whoever I think should be best.

I simply told her I felt I had lost some things in my life over the past few years; and that I wasn't sure that the Cross of Christ was big enough for this.

That's all.

She prayed for comfort and love; then she had a picture for me.

The Lord was saying that there were some chapters of my life that He needs to rewrite. To show me that He was, is, there in those chapters with me. And that right there and then, a new chapter was beginning, being written. The old chapters are past and gone; here beginneth the new one.

The tears came; and with them, repentance and acceptance.

And new emotions.

Now try telling me miracles don't happen. For I've proof that they do.

There are HUNDREDS of snowdrops in this part of the world right now.

A sign from God for me.