As spring continues to unfold, I find myself noticing not just what is blooming—but what is still in process.

There are places in life where things open easily. And others where the ground feels slower to thaw.

Lately, I’ve been reflecting on forgiveness as part of this season of change. Not as a single moment, but as a quiet, ongoing practice. A softening over time.

I’ve also been preparing for an upcoming talk on the story of St. Monica and her son, Augustine, a story that has stayed with me in a new way this year. Monica persisted for seventeen years—steadfast in love, in hope, in prayer. Augustine resisted—questioning, searching, moving through his own path in his own time.

And eventually, something shifted. Not because one forced the other. But because both journeys, in their own way and time, aligned.

It reminds me that forgiveness often lives in that space between persistence and resistance.

Between what we hold onto with care and what we must allow to unfold on its own.

Forgiveness, I’m discovering, isn’t always a single, definitive act.

It’s about releasing the tight grip on how and when things should change.

It’s about making room—for timing we don’t control, for paths we don’t fully understand.

And perhaps, most of all, it’s about trusting that even when things feel far apart, something unseen may still be moving beneath the surface.

Spring doesn’t rush what isn’t ready to bloom. And maybe forgiveness doesn’t either.

Here’s to the long arc of forgiveness—what persists, what resists, and what, in its own time, may yet resolve.