Long Time, No Write

It's been about a month and a half since I visited my blog and wrote something here.

You know how the Holidays are. Thanksgiving bleeds into Christmas, which turns quickly to the New Year, and then school starts again and life gears up to tackle something new. We resolve, we break resolutions. We forget to change the calendar over. We forget to write the new year on everything for a week or two. And then it all starts to feel normal again.



In the middle of that, I got to write for something else. Each year at church during lent (for the past two or three years, at least), we've received a small 40 day devotional to meditate on and pray over during the 40 days from Lent to Easter.

This year, our church was invited to participate in that devotional by contributing 15 of the pages. I got to write two of those.

It was just small 250-400 words on one of six topics (for the six weeks between Lent and Easter). A Bible verse, a prayer and some words of your own. That's it. But it felt really special to me.

It felt good to sit down and think about what my heart says about the two topics I chose: regret and suffering. They aren't light topics. We'll be working through Lamentations during Lent this year, so there wasn't any frivolity to choose from for this assignment. But it was good. To find the hope and light in the midst of those dark topics. And from there, to find the hope and light in the midst of a dark season.

Does winter weigh on you? I grew up in Arizona, where winter is probably the best part of the year. You get to wear a sweater, maybe five times. You get to go outside and not sweat immediately. You get to enjoy the Christmas lights but never have to shovel snow or ice driveways. And the sun shines almost every day. Even the "short" days in Southern Arizona feel decently long. Not like someone stole 4 hours from you.

And now we live in New Mexico, which is halfway between Arizona winter and a normal winter. We get temperatures in the teens. We wear scarves and jackets and boots, because it's actually necessary. But we don't get snowed in. We don't get icy roads (and when we do... rarely, the whole city shuts down).

But we have shorter days. They change a lot more here than they did during my childhood. Summer days go from 5 AM (or earlier) sunshine to at least 9 or 10 at night. And in the winter, the sun comes up at 7 AM and goes down almost right at 5, when I walk around turning all the lights on in the house. It's full dark by 6 PM.

And that means I need a little more self-care in the winter. Sometimes that means I'm tired more and just want a nap without someone talking to me every five minutes. Sometimes that means I need some warm tea just to get through the late afternoon and stop my fingers from turning blue. Sometimes that means I need to go out with a friend for coffee, even when I know the laundry needs doing or the bathrooms need cleaning, just to be outside for a moment and laugh with someone I love.

So, I've not written much in the past month and a half, but I have been trying to keep my head above water as we inch toward February and March.

We do have some really fun events and travels coming up, so I look forward to the year and the surprises it will bring. Praying for a slow days full of any light you can find, for each of you.