There is peace to be found and an early spring.

It's 5 a.m. on a very cold Saturday and my husband is sound asleep, as all humans should be. There are two dogs also snoozing (& snoring), it's pitch black outside and I'm wide awake. I'm not sure why I can't sleep in, sometime I would like to hit the snooze button but I simply can't. My brain reminds me there is a pot of coffee with my name on it. I quietly steal away into the kitchen excited as a child at Christmas, for that hot cup from heaven.
I remember being awakened on Saturday mornings as a child to watch cartoons.  My brother would wrap me in a quilt and carry me to the couch about the time Bugs Bunny started. We would feast on dry Cheerios in a cup, long before it was a reasonable time to ask mama for breakfast.

This particular morning I hear the ducks squawking on the lake, the little birds begging for spring and snoring.. so. much. snoring. Oh, but the coffee is good.
I've become very retrospective these days. As I finish my morning devotion I am thinking on my week, what was accomplished and what was tossed aside. Oh yes, things were tossed to be finished another day. It's funny how things change over time. My Forty year old self would have been bothered by all the tossing aside but sixty year old me doesn't care. If I am completely forthcoming, forty year old me was just a smidge OCD and would surely have stayed up all hours of the night to finish the list of things that must be done. The frenetic pace of days gone by, have all but left me. I rest more these days, physically, emotionally and spiritually. Trusting that God will lead me every moment of every day. It's a tough concept to fathom when you are young because you have so many plans! I planned out every day and jumped in with both feet, mindful to thank God for the day but kind-of acting like I was in charge. You learn to trust God more, you become more willing to give up (self) and then the peace comes. Real peace. How often do we hear someone say, "I wish I knew then what I know now?" Oh how true.

Yesterday afternoon as the sun streamed in the living room windows, nasty and smudgy windows were staring back at me. (Maybe forty year old me isn't completely gone.) So I drug out the short step ladder, cleaner and paper towels. We have double hung windows which tilt out for easy cleaning. Maybe a more apt description would be "manhandle-type tilting window".. nevertheless, I got them tilted out and cleaned. While I cleaned I listened to the birds and off in the distance I heard the doves cooing. For real? I stopped to be sure.. let me hear it once more. Yep. There they go again, a sure sign of spring. I can hear my mothers voice in my head as if she is standing here, announcing the coming of spring. If mama were still on this earth she would have called all three of her children bright and early to make sure we knew she heard the doves.
Mama purely relished the coming of spring each year. It meant she was no longer cooped up in the house. She loved her hands in the dirt, getting her yard in shape and waiting for each new bloom.  Well into her early eighties she was seen pushing a lawn mower and weeding her shrubs.

My phone no longer rings with her announcements but now it's my turn. My turn to pass on the wisdom of the past, the knowledge of Gods sufficient grace and how you can trust He has you in his hand. Even the doves cooing.. I have a few phone calls to make, Spring is on the way.