Look what's peeking through

It is piling up again out there, the blanket of white stretching it's arms far into April, and we tough Midwesterners are beginning to truly say "Uncle". If there is one more gray day, we say. If it doesn't start to warm up soon...

I silently wonder if winter's expanse hasn't lingered just for me. The gray days match my mood (or do they cause it?) and snow keeps scars under wraps. Summer is not so kind.

I am cutting cords, this wintery spring. Trying to be willing to change. It's a big leap for me. After all, I've kept myself relatively safe with this way of coping and I'm scared that the new ways won't give me the armor I need.

Happiness creeps in with the study of a list of Scriptures with my mama. This list tallies all the ways healthy coping is straight from the good Book. And I breathe - let myself believe, again - that this might work. I feel happy and say so, and then touch my chest in shock that those words just slipped easily from my lips again.

It's a little like the blades of bright green grass sticking up through the snow, the crocus leaves catching flakes in the diffused light of the snowstorm. It has grown in silent and the secrets of my heart these last weeks, this tiny fragile piece of happiness, and it is birthed, even through snow. There it is. I think that it might be hope. He is saying

I have swept away your offenses like a cloud, your sins like the morning mist. Return to me, for I have redeemed you. (Isaiah 44:22)

"Jump"