52 Weeks of 2013 - Week 9

I do not enjoy winter, the cold and the damp and the gloom. I know that I can no longer really complain, our winter here, compared to other states, or even countries, is incredibly mild. It is not the biting cold that I experienced with my English winters, when I would walk through the snow and come home, my eyelashes frozen and clumped together, my cheeks stinging. I no longer experience the agony of my poor frozen toes swollen and blistered from chilblains...yet I still look forward to spring. There is anticipation and longing.

I can often be found telling myself, reminding myself, yet again, this is just a season. A season of living on one income, a season of a husband in school, a home that feels too small....but I live in expectation that our spring will come. I will once again see the buds on the trees and the weights will be lifted. I would not trade these days and the challenges we at times face, for any other life. There is joy and beauty to be found each day, there are smiling and laughing children and hugs and "I love you"s and the security that comes from a best friend by my side.

Spring would not be so sweet without the preceding winter. That is how life is. We need to go through the trials and the darkness, to really appreciate when the sun breaks through. To feel the warmth on our faces, to see the flowers in bloom and feel the hope rise within us. Can we really appreciate what we have, unless we have had not?