The February Post

Oh, February.

A time for questioning. A time for contemplation.

Like questioning why I don't work full time. Why I continue to live in the actual boonies. Why people ever settled in this winter wasteland. You know, just the little questions.

Because February is rough.

I can't speak for you, but for some reason, be it the weeks on end of extreme cold, the tiny house I live in with my own offspring who in their own right are irritable and frustrated at constant confinement, and the always being around said offspring with the homeschooling business, February seems ridiculously hard.

It probably isn't the hardest winter I've experienced, but it does feel eternal when the temperatures haven't felt above -10C for the complete calendar month. It's sorta like a marathon of days after days looking the same, feeling the same, and people getting more and more on your nerves. A mental olympics for which there is no winner!

The perspective is that it does eventually end. Even though I can't realistically imagine it. It would be really nice if it ends by Easter...but I can't get my hopes up because we had snow for all of April last year...and I'm still feeling the effects/traumatized!

Difficult seasons for me can take on a very literal meaning. It is hard to keep going and plugging along when you know there is not quick fix in sight. There's no way of rushing spring or cold weather along. And that all goes exactly contrary to the very human desire to hurry the bad stuff up and stop languishing in the hard.

I'm getting older and maybe a bit better at realizing that we don't have to fix things or rush things or conquer difficult seasons. Firstly, because it's usually completely out of our control, but also because it's a part of life. Our human powers can't make things completely easy just be willing it enough or working hard enough. Difficult seasons are simply a fact.

Which isn't to say we can't get better at dealing with the difficult, at offering up our suffering, at changing our attitudes to embrace the hard. But that doesn't change that the hard is there and to be lived. It's just that slice of life we wish we could shrug off, which our culture and every social media channel tells us we need to ignore and/or conquer with positive thinking.

Difficult seasons happen. Our lives are composed of difficult and easier seasons and we've got to hold on to the fact that even in those difficult times when we feel bleak and frozen that we're still alive underneath it all. And hopefully will come back to life again in the spring.

---

follow along:

facebook ~ instagram ~ pinterest