The last few days here have felt like spring, the initial days of spring, with slightly warmer weather and more sunshine.

I’ve been able to walk in tennis shoes instead of my big, heavy black boots, and it’s felt wonderful. It’s been so nice to walk and run on ground that isn’t coated with ice or snow. I’ve longed for the ease of it lately!

But it’s just been a taste of spring, a hint, a reminder of what’s to come. Spring isn’t quite here, but I can sense it, feel it.

I’ve really loved this winter; I’ve embraced it, sunk into it fully. I haven’t longed to be somewhere else or wished that it was warmer; I’ve just soaked in the space where I am, appreciated what I’ve had and what I could do here.

It has been lots of big sweaters and warm robes and fuzzy socks and scented candles and curling up under multiple blankets. It’s been reading and settling in here, where I am, with whatever I’m feeling and whatever I feel like doing.

I’ve embraced the slowness, the cold, the darkness, the way it all seems to take away whatever internal pressure I sometimes feel when the weather is warmer and sunnier and brighter to be outside, to do something, to take advantage.

But I feel the inner stirrings inside of myself, the longing for spring, with the sun and warmth and less layers, with runs where I don’t have to avoid patches of ice or slushy, heavy snow.

Spring brings with it a kind of anticipation, a hope, an aliveness. It feels like fresh beginnings, newness, an unfolding.

The last couple of days, I’ve noticed myself wanting to temper this—this anticipation, the light hope I feel when I think about spring—because it’s still winter and we still have snow and it might continue to be cold and we might get even more snow at some point and I don’t want to be disappointed or pull myself out of the present by wishing things were different from how they are in this moment.

But then, maybe we don’t have to temper anything. Maybe we can embrace it all—the beauty of what we have now, the snow, and the slowness, and the coziness of the cold, while we hold that inner hope, the anticipation, the longing for spring and warmth, because it’s there and it’s happening, and it’s how we’re genuinely feeling.

We can appreciate where we are while still holding hopeful anticipation for where we’re going.

It feels quite natural that after a few months of cold, we’d begin to long for warmth and sunshine and the colors of spring.

Everything changes; nothing stays the same. Even within us.

Life is change and transition and movement.

Things are always changing.

Spring is change; it’s a waking up, an awakening.

The whole world feels like it’s coming alive.

It’s hope, it’s fresh, it’s newness.

It’s potential.

It’s opportunity.

It feels like a beautiful blossoming beginning.

And while I can feel myself longing for spring—for the beauty and the warmth and all that wonderful potential—I’m not wishing winter away, wishing away the moments I’m living.

We don’t have to wish away where we are to make space for what’s coming, or to hold space for what we feel happening within us.

We can appreciate where we are and what we have right now, while we open to the potential of what’s coming and where we’re heading.

We can settle into where are, embrace it, let ourselves be here fully, while also holding within us the space for the inner stirrings, the hope, the anticipation, the eventual shifting and changing into something new, into whatever is coming.

And that’s what life is.

It’s movement, it’s change, it’s transition.

Even if we feel settled in life, things are always changing—within us and around us.

We’re always in transition.

So, for the last few days, I’ve embraced more sunshine and warmth and the reminder of how much I love spring, the hope and potential I feel lingering in this change.

We can embrace all of our moments, wherever we are, whatever we’re doing, as we open to the beauty and potential of what’s coming, of what we feel unfolding.

It’s not quite spring, but it doesn’t feel like the depths of winter we’ve been in either, and maybe this is a transition in itself—one we can move with, embrace, sink into.

We’re always in transition.

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