Come to life

It's in the air today.  Everyone seems to be buzzing about spring.  Grateful for warm sunshine and blooming flowers and winter nearing its end.  I never tire of the changing of the seasons even if the changes are more subtle here in the south. 

The rosebud tree outside my living room window is budding with it's usual pink flowers before growing it's yearly leaves shaped like hearts.

I can smell spring blowing through my house this Wednesday afternoon.  The windows are open, the curtains making their in and out motions as the breeze comes and goes.  My heart feels full and content as I busy with housework and the unending organizing projects underway as this time next week, it will be on the market, strangers coming to look at my walls deciding if they want to make them their own.  Much of my heart feels blessed and at rest and peace.

Even my bedroom feels peaceful.  Four years living here and I just now have our bedroom the way I had envisioned years ago.  A beautiful new bedspread, and a piece of watercolor art that my Great-Grandmother Dorothy painted.  Thankfully I can take it all with me and put it in a new home.  But I love the way the light from the windows warms everything.  Makes it bright and inviting.  Romantic even.  Just like a master suite should be.

In all of the projects and even in the beauty of my newly decorated bedroom, sadness is present too.  Knowing this is my last spring here, my last March of warm sunshine and budding trees and sandals.  It's not even 30 degrees in North Dakota - snow on the ground, snow still coming.  Spring still weeks (and weeks) away.

Before Todd left again, we had dinner with some good friends from church.  Our friend Andy commented to me how different my husband was - he was chatty and had a lot to say about his new job and North Dakota and this adventure ahead of us.  "He's different, he has this new sparkle in his eye," Andy said.  I smiled hearing someone else observe what I've seen change in my man. 

I've watched my husband come to life right in front of my eyes with all of these changes.  A new job and career, something he can take pride in, and up north - the place where he feels most like himself.  He has a new energy in his step, a lightness in his voice.  I've fallen in love with him all over again just seeing him soften and sparkle in ways that I've only ever seen glimpses of before. 

My husband has waited long and hard and slow in winter's grasp.  Of evil's assault on his heart telling him he would never be more than what he was.  That he would be stuck, that he was forgotten, that he wasn't worth anything more.  But God....

But God is able to do exceedingly above more than we could ever think or imagine!  Oh how true, how magnificent, how wild is our God!  Like a fierce wind and changing of a season, He brought a long awaited and highly anticipated spring to my beloved.

Thank you Lord for change.  For creation and budding flowers, for warm sunlight, and for making all things new.  Thank you for spring and adventures and grand surprises at the work of Your hands.  May I remember this warmth and beauty and peace in the seasons that are ahead...