“Expect to have hope rekindled.  Expect your prayers to be answered in wondrous ways.  The dry seasons in life do not last.  The Spring rains will come again.”

—  Sarah Ban Breathnach

The calendar tells me that I must wait two more weeks for the first day of Spring.  That is fine with me, because I don’t like to wish away my days or hurry through life.  I am willing to wait for Spring to come; but I think the calendar needs a new notation — one that marks the first weekend of March.  We could call it Expectation.  Every year, just as the last snow disappears from the winter landscape and the mud oozes up from the thawing earth, I find myself pulling on my hiking shoes, grabbing my camera, and venturing out to celebrate the expectation of the rebirth that lies ahead.

I really don’t remember how old I was the first time I celebrated Expectation.  I remember a time, when I was very young, when the first flowers of Spring amazed and surprised me.  They seemed to appear overnight, without warning, and change the entire world with their color.  Their presence warmed the air, and soon I found myself walking barefoot in puddles where only a month earlier I had slid on snow.  Spring was an unexpected gift, wrapped in pastel pink and fresh green.  I learned to smell it in the air and to hear it in the songs of the birds that returned from their winter homes.  I watched it unfold one bloom at a time and awoke each day to find that the newness seemed never-ending.  We grow and we live through the cycles and seasons that reliably measure the days of our lives.  I really don’t remember how many times the wheel turned before I began to understand that Summer, Fall, and Winter would always lead to Spring.  I really don’t remember the first time I began to see Spring through the eyes of faith.

As I stood yesterday by the river, I closed my eyes and saw that Spring will soon be here.  I could smell it in the unfrozen mud, ripe with the decay of winter.  I could hear it in the rushing water as the silent snow of winter sang its melting song to the rocks it met as it flowed downstream.  I opened my eyes to the almost-green of the willow branches that danced their yellow dance against the cloudy sky.

As I reflect on the cycles and seasons I have lived, I realize that my own life comes and goes and comes around again, just like the seasons of the year.  Through countless repetitions of hopes and dreams and ebbs and flows, I have learned to expect prayers to be answered.  I have learned that even after the darkest night the sun will rise again.

Today the clouds have opened and the first soft rain of Expectation is falling all around.  I close my eyes again and think of the willows along the riverbank swaying in the falling rain.  In two more weeks they will be green.