Seasons

I've always been a summer person.  I love the heat, and the sun somehow warms my heart & and makes life more fun.  But in the last 10 years or so spring has also caught my heart.  The longer I live and the more I experience, the more I long for growth, healing and re-birth in my own life & in others.  Spring is able to bring outward evidence of hope and promise after a long, dark northwest winter.  Now I long for the first signs of spring and feel my heart warming to hope again.

I've never had much use for fall or winter because of all the cloudy days.  I don't mind rain except for cold rain, which is what we have for months in the fall and winter.  As a kid I appreciated snow days and sledding.  But the beauty and quiet blanket of peace that snow brings to a neighborhood somehow lost out to the pain of traveling to work in the snow and ice, and potential frostbite for kids who eternally refuse to dress warm enough for the weather.  Plus snow is normally rare around here and hardly seems worth the cost of long, dark days with drizzly rain that lasts for weeks at a time.  All the kids cooped up in the house without an outlet for their energy is hard on everyone.  Every winter I feel anxious and closed-in and wonder how I ever felt happy in my dreary life.  After 30+ years of this pattern I figured out it was a seasonal thing for me and that even though it feels like forever, it never is.  An end comes just as I give up hope, and six months of relief settle in.

This winter was different.  We were always cold, thanks to our walls of windows and propane prices that tripled after we bought our house.  But there is something cozy and safe about this home.  And maybe it is also that our relationships have healed enough over the last couple of years that there is finally more peace than conflict - usually.

Chris and I have experienced a re-birth in our relationship since we moved back here.  This past fall we began to feel younger and hopeful and in love with our life together.  We have always had a strong and caring marriage, but this life has been so much harder than we had planned and we aged faster than we could have believed.  The darkness of this winter has not been an emotional darkness, as in the past.  It was simply dark outside a lot - but we've been regularly happy and craved our time together.  For the first time in my life I am looking at the spring weather of this past week with bittersweet happiness.  I realized today that I will actually MISS this last winter.  That is a very strange first for me.  It used to be that I loved the seasons.  But I meant overall - because fall and winter were really just the pain and darkness of life that allows us to appreciate and embrace the joy and happiness of spring and summer.  I can now say that I enjoy all the seasons of this beautiful place.  Each holds its own rare beauty to me and thankfulness is replacing seasonal depression in my heart.

I love this place...