It’s definitely time to jump-start this blog!
I’ve been telling myself that for several weeks now. It’s time to move on from my “year from hell,” and hit the reset button. Seize a new day, and now, even better, seize a new year.
I keep telling myself that 2025 will be a year of blessing and healing for me, and for my small homestead. And I really believe it. I really do. Most of the time. Or at least, I try.
But somehow today, with my whole, entire world shut down in the aftermath of the most powerful winter storm we’ve seen for ten years; and with my parents both slogging through another round of Covid; and with Banner, the thin-skinned whippet, recovering from a barbed-wire wound sustained on one of our walks – well, somehow, blessing and healing still seem a long way out of reach.
So, this is a good afternoon to sit down, and slow down, and take things into perspective. After all, there isn’t much else to do. Yesterday’s blizzard, which elbowed its merciless way across much of the Midwest, left fourteen inches of snow in its wake, along with bitter cold. The roads are impassable. My driveway is impassable. Solid drifts, three to four feet deep, have completely blocked the east-west section of the drive, where it empties onto the unplowed road. The dogs aren’t getting walked. The goats are huddled in the barn. We are stranded and stuck and stir crazy.
This was not how I wanted to begin my new year of hope and healing.
But I’m not going to turn this share into a rant session. Hope and healing, after all, are things that run deeper than those drifts across my driveway. Every storm blows over. Sometimes, you just need to find shelter until it does. Sometimes, just like me trekking out to the barn, wearing my tall boots and layer upon layer of warm clothes, you just have to wallow forward, one step at a time, breaking your own trail through untouched snow. It takes effort, and resolve, and some good old-fashioned grit. Fourteen inches of snow is a lot of work!
On the other hand, the snow really is amazing. The height of it, the depth of it, the dazzling whiteness of it, smoothing over a weary world of browns and grays, bringing beauty to the bland of everyday. I like that. I like that thought for my life. A new year, washed in white, made deep and fresh. Who knows what possibilities might lie under those drifts? Who knows what tracks will be made and what trails will be broken? The only way to find out is to suit up, pull on my tall boots, and to walk into it, wading and wallowing forward, finding my footing, one step at a time.
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