It's February, and I already feel the year slipping away.
Okay... maybe it's a little early to start lamenting the year going by too fast, but I do often feel a sense of desperation for how time seems to disappear faster each year. Does anyone else out there reading this relate?
Something I've been doing for a few years now is recording life in journals/planners of a sort - something I create as I go. I tend to peter out by summer (which is a great disappointment when I look back at my journals), but each year I stick with it a little longer. Fortunately, I record stuff on my phone's calendar, so at least I can look back for the dates that important-to-me things happened. Being more of an optimist than not, every January I start a journal like this, and hope it will have staying power. One of these years, maybe...
While we've turned chilly again, and snow is in the forecast, it was unseasonably warm the first three days of February. Sunday was in the 50's and Monday was 68°F! In the sunroom on Groundhog Day, I enjoyed how glorious were the colors I was crocheting with, as I sat like a cat bathed in sunlight, basking in its warmth.
While true spring is a month and a half away on the calendar, and probably longer than that in temperatures, it was spring in my heart for a few days. All stresses melted away, as thoughts of what I might plant in the garden tickled my imagination.
While the month started out very nicely here, and in spite of all my crooning over how great the warmth has been, I am not ready for the busyness of spring. I have more cocooning to do. More cooking of hearty meals. More getting things in order, and house cleaning before we start traipsing in dirt and dust from outside all over again.
And breaking into all these pleasant things is the knowledge that there are many still suffering from hurricane damage in the southeast, and fire damage in California, and all kinds of pestilence and harms around the globe. I sometimes struggle when life is going well for me, knowing it is hard for others. Do you this too? It seems a form of survivor's guilt. Not productive except that it prompts me to pray and help when and how I can.
How is it in your corner of the world? Are you filled with the hope of coming spring, or struggling through the dreary cold of winter? Or somewhere in between? Every February I seem to find myself somewhere in between - this year glad for merely chilly temps instead of the bitter cold we had a few weeks ago; not wanting spring to come too early, but also eager to see things growing again.
As long as the earth endures,
seedtime and harvest,
cold and heat,
summer and winter,
day and night will never cease.
Genesis 8:22 (NASB)
