The sun is starting to rise as I shuffle past the window. I glance outside. . .and end up not moving for another hour.

While I was sleeping, the ice released its grip on the shoreline, creating a stage for an opening act I would have missed if the smell of coffee hadn’t lured me into the kitchen.

In a narrow strip of open water, the same shade of silver-blue as my favorite pair of jeans, there are too many ducks and geese to count. A pair of swans, elegant in white, glide by with the poise of runway models. Their heads are close together, speaking a language no one else can understand.

I spot the otter that cruised past the dock every morning before the lake froze over and a muskrat perched on a thin shelf of ice. The bald eagle that nests on the point sails above them, here and gone in a split-second, the resident photo bomber.

The snow that covered the ground, silenced footsteps and song birds, must bend to the will of all this movement and sound.

On the lake, spring isn’t a season, it’s a verb.

The sun continues to rise and my coffee gets cold.

The trees wave and applaud and I want to join in. I am in awe of God and the beauty of His creation. This gift after a long winter. The prelude of things to come.

I wrote this in my journal last year. A few days ago we returned from a visit with family and saw that the ice had detached from the shoreline, creating a tiny bay not far from the house.

The swans will be back, I told my husband.

And they are. I can see them from the window by my desk while I’m writing this.

If you live in a place where the landscape is a palette of white and charcoal gray for more months than you want to count, these simple sightings are cause for celebration. The buds forming on branches and the blades of grass peeking out from the melting snow remind me that things are changing. Remind me that even things that appear cold and dead will come back to life again.

Remind me of hope.

In fact, if hope was a color, I’m pretty sure it would be green.

And although it’s easy to equate hope with waiting, it’s not an uncomfortable chair that forces us to sit tight and sit still. It’s standing-on-your-tiptoes-with-your-nose-pressed-against-the-window expectant.

Hope invites us to lean in and look more closely.

Hope rejoices in the big and the small.

Like spring, hope is a verb.