Seasonal Reflection Series by Rochelle Soetan

Whatever is shifting, trust it—
even if it’s still buried
deep beneath the surface,
unnamed and unseen.

You’re standing
in that fragile,
holy in-between.

Right here—
between the goodbye and the becoming,
the ache and the answer.

Don’t rush it.
Don’t shame it.
Take your time.

Like the Earth,
we are always becoming—
quietly, slowly, deliberately.

The planet does not bloom in haste.
Its revolutions, its seasons, its healing—
all unfold in divine timing.

On Earth Day, we remember:
restoration isn’t a rush job.
It’s a return.
A realignment.
A remembering.

Spring doesn’t demand speed—
it only asks for surrender.

It reminds us
that movement isn’t always motion.
That becoming can look like standing still,
like pausing in a doorway,
letting the light wash over your face
before you take the next step.

This season of revelation
doesn’t need your urgency.
It needs your trust.

Breathe.
Listen.
Stay.

There’s a stretch
between the jamb and the journey,
a trembling, quiet place
where nothing’s fully over
and nothing’s quite begun.

That’s where I’ve been.

Forehead pressed to wood,
palm flat against possibility.

Nobody talks about this part—
the ache before the answer,
the breath before the breakthrough,
the way your soul paces
while your body stands still.

If you’re here too—
in the hush before the open—
know this:

the threshold is holy.
It holds you
until you’re ready to move.

And when that moment comes,
may you walk through the door
like you know who you are—
because the hinge never held you back.

It held you up.

We glorify arrivals,
next chapters,
fresh starts—
but what about the hinge moments?

The holy hesitations?
The sacred pause
where you’re not called to act—
you’re called to feel?

This is where faith grows legs.
Where surrender sounds like survival.
Where you learn to trust
the tension that stretches you
but doesn’t snap you.

The jamb holds memory.
It carries every version of me
that ever stood at the edge—
wide-eyed, wrecked, weathered.

And the journey?
It’s never straight.
It loops.
It burns.
It strips you down
to what’s real.

I’ve begged God
to re-open doors
I had no business walking back through—
friendships I’d outgrown,
titles I’d buried myself beneath,
dreams that died
with a different version of me.

But He didn’t.
Not out of cruelty—
but mercy.

Some portals aren’t meant
to be revisited.
Some doors are lessons.
Some are graves.
Some are both.

And in between—
in the hush before the handle turns—
I’ve met the deepest parts of myself.

The parts that whisper
instead of shout.
The parts that build altars
out of uncertainty
and learn to pray
without language.

Now I see the doorframe
for what it really is—
not a checkpoint
but a calling.

This in-between has carved me.
Softened me.
Made me fluent in silence.
Fluent in truth.

I’m not just stepping through doors anymore.
I’m building them.
Framing them with language.
Holding the hinge
with holy hands.

And walking forward—
not as someone waiting to be invited in
but as someone who finally understands:

I was the doorway all along.

Not every door swings wide
on the first try.
Some require stillness.
Listening.
A reckoning
with what you’re leaving behind
and who you’re becoming.

This spring,
I’m honoring the thresholds—
the spaces between what was
and what’s next.

The sacred pause.
The unspoken yes.

Between the jamb and the journey,
there is growth.
There is grace.
There is God.

And like the Earth—
weathered but unwavering—
I will rise
in rhythm,
not in rush.

In Honor of Earth Day, National Poetry Month, and Becoming