It took me years to learn patience.

Oh how I prayed for patience for so many years, and what God sent me repeatedly was times where my patience was tried. I thought, how can this be, but he gave me the opportunity to practice it.

Here in Minnesota, it is now March 2, when many of us are SO. OVER. WINTER. My commute to work is approximately 50 miles (one way) and I spend an average of 3-4 hours per day in the car in the winter. I am by now an expert at patience.

This week of course winter persists, and we all wonder when it will ever be over.

I thought I’d be giving you updates on our maple syruping project by now, but winter says no, not yet. The piles of snow around our land makes it near impossible to do anything on our homesteading level except to walk out to the chicken and goat barns, which is getting increasingly harder to open and shut the doors without continual shovelling out. The roof of our chicken aviary collapsed under the tremendous snow so come spring, there will be rebuilding.

Do you ever feel like that? Besides just winter. When you want something so badly, but God says, no… not yet.  In their wonderful book, “In the Wait” by Holly Holt, Courtney Bobko, Amanda Jass, Chelsea Ritchie and Heidi Anderson, they beautifully share how God moved through them during seasons of adversity and waiting. How God built their faith and revealed a purpose for the waiting,  through cancer, miscarriage, and more.

Now, I don’t know if we actually need quite this much snow, but I do know that arctic tundra (Minnesota), snow provides insulation for the soil, so that the extreme cold temperatures don’t freeze the soil as deep as it would otherwise. If we had no snow, the cold temps could freeze the soil so much that it would affect roots of shrubs and even trees. It also provides a home for some animals and protects them also from the brutal cold.

I’d love to close out in this song Seasons, by Hillsong Worship. It so beautifully illustrates how God doesn’t give up on us. While we might be in a (metaphorical) season, or in the (literal) winter, there is a beautiful reason for the wait. Even if we don’t know what that is yet.

For all I know of seasons,
is that you take your time
Your could have saved us in a second
Instead you sent a child.

Until next time, be well my friends ❤