Ugly Yard

After breakfast this morning, the kids ran off to play, Tim was putting our handrail back on the basement stairwell (we moved a desk down into the basement last night), and after I finished cleaning up, I took my cup of hot chocolate into the living room and set Zeke down to explore.  Tenth Avenue North's second album was playing from the kitchen.  Peaceful moment, really.  I try to capture them when I can.  :)
I was looking out the front window and the yards starting getting my attention.  Leaves have been gathered and dumped curbside, waiting for the leaf truck to come vacuum them up this week.  Trees are bare now.  There is really no more work to be done in terms of yard maintenance until next spring.
The yards are in a state of waiting, you could say.  They're kind of green and alive, kind of brown and dead.  An ugly state waiting for the next thing...to be blanketed in a thick mass of beautiful, white snow. 
How often does life feel like that?  As if we are in a state of waiting, left to wonder about what's coming next.  How often do we feel as if life is in a stage of ugliness and we're just waiting in anticipation for that snow, that pure whiteness that is going to blanket us and make it beautiful?
I have felt it.  Recently, even.  Sometimes it almost seems as if there is always a waiting period around the bend.  A waiting period waiting for us to enter into for a time.  Sometimes short, sometimes lengthy. 

The Lord wants to cover you.  We are told this in Zephaniah 3:17:

"The Lord your God is in your midst,

a mighty one who will save;

he will rejoice over you with gladness;

he will quiet you by his love;

he will exult over you with loud singing."

I love the thought that the Lord is exulting over me with loud singing.  He is quieting me by His love.  He is a blanket of snow that will come cover my ugly state and make me beautiful again.  I just have to wait on Him.

"Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the LORD!"  -Psalm 27:14