The flowers are pushing themselves up through the soil and the sound of birds send greetings in the morning.  I saw two Robins on the way to school this morning, hopping on the grass that is finally recovering from all the heavy snow, tiny green blades appearing among the brown.  Recess was finally warm enough today to just wear a jacket outside without freezing and there’s plenty of mud for the kids to find.  And while these are all wonderful signs of a long awaited spring, for me, spring comes when I get the toes painted and put the top down.

67 glorious degrees.  A little less than three weeks ago, we had our last snow day to end a season with record snowfall.  It seemed spring would never get here.  But today, with just a little wind, I finally put on the baseball cap and put the top down on the bug.  Wind therapy never felt so good.  I then drove to the nail place where I had a lovely shade of spring green put on my poor toes, the ones hidden by socks and heavy shoes for months. As my husband would say, “my dogs can breathe!”.  If I could live in sandals I would but unfortunately I live in a place that received @55 inches of snow this year, so when the sandals come out, it’s a big deal around here.  The thing we’ve hoped for, wished for, PRAYED for is finally here.  It’s spring.

Now having said this, it’s calling for 40’s and rain this weekend (it IS Nebraska after all), but thankfully I’ll be in Virginia.  They say Virginia is for lovers and I am definitely a lover of the warmer weather we’ll have while I’m there.  But for me, spring is more than the hope of warmer weather, flowers, birds and the top down on my car.  Spring is a reminder that even when you think everything in your life is going to be gray and cold and gloomy forever, there is always the promise of spring if we’ll just be patient.  The seasons of life are ever changing with some being bright and sunny and others dark and cloudy.  Everything looks dead but underneath is the promise of new growth and color.

We have a choice of giving in to all the gloom of the season or creating our own sunshine.  I’ll have to admit that it’s really easy to give in to the gloom, especially when you can’t think of anything to do to combat it.  So it becomes a matter of trust and knowing that you’ve made through gloomy seasons before.  Eventually it gets through to you that God has always been there during those dark times and each time the sun came out in the end and chances are you learned something in the process.

In the meantime, I’m embracing the painted toes and the top down.