Winter.

Winter is my least favorite season. Just a week in. The glimmer and flicker of lights disappear. The world is a little more bland and isolating. No angels and ornaments. No reds and greens. The house is back to normal. A normal it hasn’t seen since August. Before the lights and the fall colors and apples and pumpkins that led into the pine and twinkles and snowmen and wooden nativity.

As I write this today. Rain and sun dance back and forth. Light and shadows. A quiet sound of a winter’s fire. Both coffee and tea have been drained from Christmas mugs. And I look around the room. Wanting to clean and remove and store away the memories. But sigh at the depressing vision of a bare mantle and a bare banister.

There aren’t many rainy days I spend at home. In pajamas and fuzzy socks. Coffee and tea. Blankets and fires. I set my mind on resting and breathing today. A winter day. After an unusual Christmas. An unusual year. Trying to make myself reflect and ponder, imagine and dream. Creation exhaling and creaking as it closes another year. The days grow ever so slowly longer, straining towards spring and new growth and hopeful promises.

Winter wraps around us all in a new way this year. Remembering 365 days ago. When the world was interactive. Bustling. Moving. Open. Never dreaming that within 3 months we would enter a cold lasting longer than just a winter’s season.

Staring out the window. The rain has begun again. The dark clouds shadowing the window sill. I search for the words to describe this last winter of a year.

Disappointing. Confusing. Challenging. Unreclaiming.

Searching deeper. Digging through memories and lost dreams. Pulling out the words.

Joy. Family. Faith. Unity.

Though the first set of words may overshadow the long winter year. Hidden beneath. If I strain and squint. The new 4 are there too.

Even now. Will the winter continue? I wonder. Do I dare imagine a spring of growth? Past the cold and blinding wind and rain. Can I see the sun and light on the other side?

The dreams. The promises. On the other side of the bare and bleak. Will this winter be different? Will the days get long? The sun get warmer?

Do I have the capacity to stay squinting and searching for those words that were buried in the last 9 months? Hold on to them. Water and care for them. So when it’s time for the new growth. After the long winter. I. We. Can reap what we have been longing for.