Spring will come.

It’s easy to believe spring will come to the Bluegrass again today.

The sun is beating steady and sure against the windows of my favorite coffee shop, like my own personal heater, and it’s just barely warm enough outside to run errands and drive through the car rider line at my daughter’s school without a coat. There will be more ice and snow, I’m sure, but today…today’s enough to remind me that soon, God, as my friend Lara says, will switch from using pastels to painting with highlighters all across creation, as redbud trees and forsythia explode into the riot of spring.

I don’t mind winter–there’s actually something deeply spiritual about it for me. And I love the first snow every year like it’s the first snow I’ve ever seen. But even I am growing weary of this particular part of winter. This deadness. This unending procession of cold and dark pressing in and all around. I want to feel the sun on my shoulders and play late and long into the evening with Curly Girl and our sidekick Skye the Dog.

So the sun, today, it is both blessing and promise–that what is now will not always be.

What is now…will not always be.

Darkness does not last forever. Neither does light. There is an ebb and flow to this life we live that makes every moment so damn precious. And so often we forget this.

I am a champion worrier–so much so that last week the almost-9-year-old (how is that possible?!?) in my house said, “Mommy…you really need to stop worrying so much.”

She’s right (little imp!). But even her earnest caution isn’t always enough to stop me from trying to manage the future, get there faster (wherever “there” is), ensure success or security, protect her and everyone else I love from injury or pain.

And when this worry really has a hold on me, I get so focused on what’s ahead that I forget to focus on right now. On what’s directly in front of me. On the goodness that has surrounded me my whole life long, even in the darkest of nights and the scariest of days.

Last week, a colleague and friend said to me, “Julie, I know…I know there is so much you worry about. And I know that your life hasn’t exactly turned as you thought or planned…but please, please just trust me that it’s okay to just enjoy your life. Be with your daughter. Take a deep breath…and trust that it will be okay.”

I registered for a 10-mile race this week. I have no idea if I can run 10 miles, the furthest I’ve ever run having been 6–but I want to know if I can. And I think, while I train, while I discipline my muscles to do what I’m asking them to do…I think I’ll practice breathing. Trusting. Believing.

Because spring will come.

Always, and in ways that maybe we least expect.