fleeing the snowpack

It's been a snowy winter in Boston (understatement). But in the last few weeks, the temperature has spent some quality time above freezing, and there are vast swaths of, well, mud emerging in my neighborhood. That's an encouragement. (Really.) Ever since it started snowing in late January, though, part of what's kept me cheerful in spite of deepening snowdrifts and malfunctioning public transportation is the knowledge that my winter had a hard stop date: April 6. No matter what Boston had to go through after that, at least I wasn't going to be a part of it. And certainly by the time I came back, the snow would have (mostly?) melted!

Of course, now that I'm just a week away - and this Friday's high temperature is currently forecast to break sixty degrees - the allure of escape is becoming less attractive. Six weeks is a long time, and I've spent a lot of time away from Boston this academic year. In spite of a deep love of travel, I'm also something of a homebody at heart. And in preparation for this trip - three and a half weeks at Tenwek and two weeks in Nairobi - I'm finding the idea of leaving home a little harder than I normally do. Which makes me think a lot about God and his sense of timing, and how there have been things in my life which have seemed like really not-great timing but have turned out, in fact, to be perfect timing in the end.

The truth is that I've started to get little bubbles of excitement in the last week or so: when I'm chatting with a Kenyan friend I haven't seen in a year, when I think about the familiar beauty of rainy season in the highlands, or when I remember how good the community at Tenwek is, and how I really hate to leave every single solitary time. I know this time will be the same. And I have the whole of Holy Week to celebrate with my community here before I leave, which will make Easter weekend particularly sweet, I'm sure.

And maybe by the time I come back, it really will be spring.