Spring Thaw

  The sun is shining down with penetrating warmth. Its rays run deep and thaw the icy cold of the earth below. The snow that has long blanketed the ground starts to melt as the crystals are turned into droplets that sink into the dry dirt. The frozen water drips off of the roof, falling gently to the earth. But it hasn't always been this way. The spring thaw was once just a hope...

  Before the melting could happen, there first had to be winter. The freezing cold of those dark days and long nights, that wondering if the warmth of spring would ever come. So, too, have been the winter seasons of my life. Those times of missing the sunshine, of only hoping that a brighter day would come. Sometimes, it was just a wish - not even a hope. A wish that, perhaps, things would get better. But, the winter lasted long. Too long, it felt. How could a spring ever happen? Will the sun ever shine again?

  And yet, here it is once more. The promise of hope has come alive. The thawing is beginning to take place. The darkness is turning into light; the frozen streams start to run. The birds fly around busily, making nests for the soon-to-arrive new life. The nights aren't so long now. The sun is warming both outside and in.

  A young man named Grant Fraser once said to a friend of his,

    

  " Sometimes it is dark for so long, we forget what it's like to see the light;

       but, if you keep getting up everyday, one day you will wake up from the

       sunshine on your cheeks."

  Waiting for the winter to pass...every one of us must endure these dark days, these long nights. But it is in this waiting that the promise of a spring thaw becomes dearer to us. We hold this hope a bit closer. We trust that the sun will shine again, that we will wake up one day with its warmth on our face. 

   If you are in the winter-time, take heart. The spring thaw will come. It is only a matter of time before the sun will shine again.