The Sun is Shining! (FINALLY)

So, so many gloomy days.

But finally the sun has begun to shine and it's shaping up to be a great lead-in to a great weekend! I think tonight we are going out to Jerry's to work with the horses and tomorrow we're going to work with the horses AND have a campfire to roast marshmallows and hotdogs and, of course, make s'mores. It seems like just yesterday (and yet so long ago) I was just posting about the last campfire of the season. Now here we are with the first one of the year!!

I LOVE this time of year. Everything seems so new. Spring is the time that I appreciate the most all the seasons that we have. Not just the physical seasons, but even the seasons of our life. It's amazing sometimes to look back and see what we have been able to endure. And we can smile on the inside, knowing we're just a little tougher than we thought. Just when you think that times are as tough as they can be and they're never going to get any better, something extraordinarily amazing happens (enter spring) and you feel so relieved and refreshed, even exuberant... ready to take on life again!!

I don't think we'd ever get the opportunity to feel that kind of a high about the good if we never had the opportunity to experience the bad. Now, I think we can always see at least some benefit to the bad (winter) in our lives. If nothing else, it helps with the patient endurance thing. And it seems like God always sprinkles some little amazing-looking snowflakes into our trials to keep us going forward. But when it comes to winter, enough is enough.

So here's to spring... whether it be the sunshine, the green grass, and the flowers or whether it be the end of a trial and hope for the new day... it's all one and the same really.

God is really great with new beginnings.