{Last year’s blooms}

I always have a hard time when we reach a transition in the seasons—when, according to me and my calendar, winter should be over and spring should be well under way—but it just aint.

I get the same way after the long hot days of summer when I’m ready for crisp fall weather and hot apple cider but the weather refuses to obey me and continues cooking us until we’re all just a little too tough and overdone.

This has been an especially long cold winter and right now I just want green grass under my toes and warm sunshine on my skin. I would also very much like the snow to stop it already and please go away forever.

{A shy flower waking up in last spring’s sunshine}

A couple of weekends ago I came up with a big plan for beating this stir craziness and ushering in spring. I was going to head over to our house remodel and work on clearing brush and construction debris. I was going to build a big—no—a huge bonfire and throw everything on it until the flames licked the sky.

I thought maybe I could melt the snow that way. I thought maybe I could trick the trees and flowers with the heat and convince them to start blooming. I thought I would build a fire big enough to coax the shy crocuses and daffodils up out of the frozen ground. I thought maybe I could even make the sun just a tad jealous and move her to shine a little warmth on our frozen landscape.

But Darren said a pregnant woman shouldn’t be moving brush and building bond fires and asked me to please stay home.

So I argued a little and then I stayed home and pouted about the weather. The cat pouted with me; we were a very sad pair.

{The cat trying to sit on my lap but finding he has less and less room with my big baby belly}

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the irony of it all—about how we humans so love instant gratification and have come up with so many clever ways to get just that—whatever it is we want right now with the push of a button or the swipe of a card. And yet we can’t change the seasons—neither the seasons of nature nor the seasons of life. There are just some things in life that can’t be rushed or hurried even by the immediate drive-through culture we’ve created. We have all this fancy technology and the whole world at our fingertips and still we can’t change the weather.

But I think maybe that’s a good thing. Because I think if given the opportunity, I would impatiently rush through everything and not actually experience anything at all. I’m not just eagerly waiting for warm weather and sunshine, we’re waiting for our house to be completed so we can move and we’re waiting for our baby to be born too; sometimes I get so impatient about it all. I want to pack my bags and settle into the new house. I want to be done with this place and on to the next. I want to hold my baby and kiss his head and hands and feet. I want, I want I want….everything, right now, without the waiting.

But this season of waiting is good for me because it forces me to slow down and take in what’s happening instead of impatiently rushing along and missing all the quiet moments in between.

Being forced to wait for what I want teaches me to savor what I will eventually get—because it gives me so much time to anticipate and desire and hope and prepare instead of just immediately walking away with my every wish as we are now so accustomed to doing.

Spring will be all the sweeter because winter has been so long.

Holding our baby will be all the more precious because I have slowly, month by month, felt him move and grow and my desire to hold and know him has grown with the waiting.

{Tiny little clothes for our little baby boy}

{A few things for the nursery}

{I can’t get over how teeny tiny adorable newborn diapers are…I’m sure I’ll change my mind after changing a few hundred of them}

{A couple weeks ago at 22 weeks}

And our house, that crazy undertaking, will be all the better too because we will have worked and waited for so long to call it home.

I don’t like waiting, but I’m honestly really thankful that life sometimes forces me to slow down and just want something for a while. I don’t want to get so caught up in the immediate that I lose all sense of dreaming about and anticipating what isn’t yet mine.

Life is all about seasons. Some seasons carry us along quickly and some ask us to quietly wait and savor what we already have. Right now I’m learning to savor; to savor the fluttery movements of the baby I want to hold and meet, to savor the days Darren and I have left with just the two of us before this baby does come, to appreciate the home we already have, and to somehow even be thankful for these cold winter days—because soon enough I’m sure, I’ll be complaining about how hot it is all the time.

{Enjoying the days with just the two of us}

“He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.” Ecclesiastes 3:11 {ESV}