This is “Kamilla”, my rose bush. Notice all the red tips—she’s about to start blossoming!

Spring is right around the corner, and everything is about to come into bloom. We are in the midst of something wonderful, something almost as wonderful as spring itself—the anticipation of spring.

The beautiful thing about anticipation is that it requires faith, faith that something good is about to happen. Even when we go through rough patches, anticipation of better days to come can spark joy within us.

The key to healthy anticipation is balance. You have to balance anticipation and excitement about the future with grounding yourself in the present moment. Something we should all make a habit of doing is finding things to be grateful for in every season of our lives, even the most difficult ones. It’s important that we are ultimately spending more time being present than planning for and anticipating the future. This isn’t always easy, especially for someone like myself, a very future-oriented person, a planner, a list-maker. I have to be very intentional about staying present, grounded in the here and now. With that being said, being the future-oriented person I am also means I love having something to look forward to—I love anticipating, always believing something amazing is about to happen!

The human experience is marked by being “bound by time”. When we think of the word “bound”, we may perceive it as negative. We can’t see the future and therefore cannot have complete control over how our lives play out. When we let go of the desire to be lord over our own lives and surrender it to God, we no longer look at time that way. We start to see our lives like a story—a story we get to read one chapter at a time. What do you do when you finish a chapter of a good book? You anticipate the next one. You have something new and exciting to look forward to! The way God created time is a blessing to us all; it gives us the gift of anticipation.