This winter has been the longest and the windiest I can remember. I’m about as ready for spring as I can be now. The cold air has just cut through my bones one too many times and I’m weary with the majority of my days being spent inside. I’m ready to look out my sunroom window and see the trees proudly sporting their new green leaves and sunshine dancing on every bud. I wanna walk through my yard and feel soft damp grass and not the crackling dead blades that winter has brought. I can’t wait to spend afternoons in the yard watching the fluffy white clouds drift by against a baby blue sky while my children play in the yard. I want to sit in our backyard swing with my husband and drink coffee. I miss hanging out my laundry! Yes, I really do! Here lately I’ve caught myself daydreaming about our next garden and the greenhouse we’re gonna put up soon. What will we grow this year and will it be better than last year? (Last year’s garden was not as abundant as the year before.) I miss the aroma of soil and that of fresh cut grass.

I think God created seasons not only for the obvious ‘cycle of life’ thing, but to make us yearn or desire for the next season. Without winter, spring would not have the special appeal that it has and without the long hot days of summer, winter might have no appeal at all. I think we actually get to the end of summer weary and yearning for a break from all our activities and busyness and are nearly willing to welcome the cold that comes along with the “slower” pace of winter. Of course, the seasons can also represent the way that our lives in general change. We all go through “seasons” in our lives and at times these seasons seem to make more of an impression on us than others. I have had seasons in my life that I thought would never end and found myself yearning for the next but feeling that it would never come. But, it always does and usually just as I think I couldn’t take even one more day. (I suppose I could refer to that “darkest before dawn” thing). So, winter actually begins to feel more unbearable as spring gets closer? I don’t know, but I know its feeling that way for me here lately. So, I will continue to daydream about the upcoming spring of 2009, plan my garden and rest up for the busyness that will follow.