Over the holidays I went with my mom to a cool salvage place and found a bucket full of vintage mattress springs. I looked them over and then walked away because why in the world would someone want a bucket of old springs.

But my intuition kept thinking about those springs. Have you ever had that happen? You see something and can’t really explain why you’re drawn to it, but—strangely—you are absolutely drawn to it.

I kept circling around the springs, trying to figure out what I’d use them for. In the back of my mind I was thinking about the upcoming found art workshop I was hosting, and so I decided to purchase the springs and figure out later how I’d incorporate them into the workshop.

I’ve been trying to do this more . . . honor my intuition. Honor that deeper voice inside me that has something to say and wants to show me something. When I feel that tapping on my soul, I’m trying to be a better listener.

The more I thought about the springs, the more I kept coming across references to Spring—as in, the season that is upon us.

I read this from Emily Dickinson:

Spring is the Period

Express from God.

And this from William Carlos Williams:

Still, the profound change

has come upon them: rooted, they

grip down and begin to awaken

Spring is awakening. I love that. And, if we are to believe Emily Dickinson (we’d be idiots not to), then it is an awakening straight from God. Love that, too.

The longer I looked at my vintage mattress springs, I realized why I was drawn to them: I tend to get overly rigid, especially when things feel chaotic externally or internally or both. I get tense and inflexible. I’m unbending with myself, which is typically unhelpful. This, then, makes me unbending with those I love, which is also typically unhelpful.

I start nitpicking (not a terribly attractive trait). I get anxious.

When I look at the spring, I’m reminded to stay flexible, to have give, keep it loose. The spring is the very essence of resilience. It gets compressed and it flows, reshapes, returns. Like Spring, too.

Kinda like grace, I guess.

If you’re feeling rigid, I get it. But how could we drop our shoulders, breathe into the tight places, and allow ourselves to be a bit less inflexible and a bit more forgiving—with ourselves, with those we love, with the horrible carpet in the girls’ room, with the black nail polish on the dining room wall, with all our feelings of over-responsibility, with our spouses (ugghhhh), with our kids, with all our worries.

When I’m at my most rigid, all of life comes from trying, trying, trying. There’s an easier way to live, a lighter way to live, I’m convinced. And it looks a lot more like this:

Love and S/spring,

Leeana