Today, I turn 45 years old—a number that feels significant for some reason. For most of my life, but especially in the last few years, I have loathed that my birthday is in February. I'll just be honest—SIDE NOTE—I still have a hard time spelling February. What is the point of that FIRST R?! By this time of the year, winter has rung it all out of every one of us. Sickness has circulated in our homes (likely more than once), the thought of going outside to freeze has us recoiling before opening the door, our skin is pasty white, and there have been a million little ways that our best turn of the year intentions have fallen by the wayside. The shortest month drags on. And on. And on.
The grace where I live is that this year, our February has been quite pleasant as far as the weather goes. We have spent more days outside, warm even, than I can remember in years past. The delightfully named February Gold daffodils are finding their way out of the ground, leaving little patches of yellow in the most surprising places. And to think that we only have a couple of weeks before we steal another hour of daylight has me looking ahead to the springtime.
I had a shift in my mind about my birthday this year. The one in the month that many of us loathe. I think back to the turning of this new year and just how unready I was to set goals and go forth with gusto. And then I think back to the past New Year's with the same feeling. It makes no sense that after the holiday letdown, after a full year of whatever has been brought to us, be it good, bad, or otherwise, we are expected to suddenly shift our mood from little bits of grief and sadness to make a master plan for the coming year in a week that would best be spent in sweat pants with the people we love the most. Setting goals in the dead of winter when the days are short and the weather is harsh is counterintuitive to the seasons.
For the record, I fully believe defining goals, setting intentions, creating rules of life, and putting ideas and energy into our inputs and outputs are all wise practices. It can be far too easy to waste the precious minutes of our lives. The older I get, the more urgency I have from the deepest places within me to make every moment I can count. But I just cannot and likely will not ever be able to rally myself in the dead of winter to set big lofty goals when literally every sign from our Creator is begging us to tuck away to our quieter places, take some time to reflect and to pay attention to things just as they are. God speaks so tenderly in the winter, I am finding.
This year, we permitted ourselves to step gently into the new year--to embrace the winter. What that meant for us to start naming the things that need to die. It's been easier to see what those things are this year. Our entire family changed nearly overnight, and I can tell you there is no quicker way to find what has been bubbling below the surface than to throw your family into a change like that. We have all had to find our footing in different ways. It's been the mercy of the Lord to show us the places in our hearts that still need a little suturing. I will forever believe one of the great graces in life is when we can not only see our shadow but understand that it's there to gently and continually nudge us closer to the heart of God.
This year, I'm not so much bemoaning my February birthday. Having allowed the winter to do its work, I can, with a certain kind of joyful anticipation, feel the beauty getting ready to sprout just beneath that ground that has been quietly sitting dormant after living through a year of my life that has nearly taken me out. I say that tired and worn and with a few more wrinkles. I say that as fear is telling me at this very moment not to type that word (joyful) because there is always that other shoe, you know, waiting to drop.
I think back to the first days of the pandemic. In those early spring months of 2020, as the world was reeling with sickness, fear, and political paranoia, the flowers were still blooming. The grass was still turning from brown to vibrant shades of green, and the mornings started greeting us with temperatures that only begged for a light jacket. In just two short weeks, we turn the clocks one hour ahead; a week after, spring is officially on the clock, and before we know it, we will be walking barefoot through summer.
I HOPE YOU FIND WHAT YOU ARE LOOKING FOR
As luck would have it, a dear friend was in town this week for work. We got to steal some time away for dinner, which turned into three courses and four hours of endless conversation. These pockets of time are a gift. The people in your life can reveal the heaviest of things; the ones that carry those things with care and can even offer a nudge of advice towards deeper freedom are the ones that you never let go. This year, both of us have held different kinds of hard. We sat across from each other, naming realities that we would rather not, posing questions that may never really have an answer, and holding onto tensions that could break the best of us. That's life in a world that is not as it should be. Not yet, anyway.
This friend left me a gift. A book filled with photographs from the part of the world that I grew up in. A book filled with word pictures in the form of poems that somehow draw you deeper into what was seen in the frame. A book filled with ways that whisper, "I see you." That's what the best art does. And the best of friends, too.
This particular poem stopped me in my tracks.
Resilience, written by Kim Stafford
Resilience is not being strong
as iron, but perennial as grass.
Resilience is not standing fast
in storms, but seeking to understand
How old trees, deep-rooted, bend.
Resilient is the one who whispers
at darkest hours, This too, shall pass.
Resilience begins in knowing sorrow,
and ends in finding how to tell its tale.
Resilience says in tough trouble, I wonder
what we'll learn. The be resilient, juggle
Strength with tenderness, in compassion
stern. Resilience lives through struggle
by thinking beyond struggle:
What does my foe need to be
my friend? Resilience means
You need not to win, and yet prevail.
The book's title is "I Hope You Find What You Are Looking For." I'm not sure many of us set out looking for resilience, but if you have lived any life at all, that is the thing many end up finding. Perhaps resilience is forged most in our Februaries—in the depths of winter. The times when we become well acquainted with sorrow. When the trees still lay bare, the ground beneath us a frozen layer of mud. The times we ask, if only to ourselves, "will the flowers still bloom."
This friend wrote to me in my card that this past year has been a crucible year. Though familiar with that word, I needed clarification on what it meant, so I looked it up. One definition is this—a situation of severe trial, or in which different elements interact, leading to the creation of something new. We have not been through a severe trial this year. Still, without hesitation, we have had many different elements interacting that have put us to the test in every imaginable way. It has been a February kind of year, perhaps the reason that the actual month has me bending like an old tree but not breaking.
As I came upon my first patch of February Golds earlier this week, I smiled from the inside out, took a deep breath, and said, "The flowers still bloom." A picture of strength and tenderness, sitting quietly beneath the surface in the winter months, building strength, and bursting forth with tenderness. They lived to tell the tale. So may we.
Your musings are always magic. Thank you for the peek in a world we all live but rarely pause to be brave enough to reflect on.
Congrats on the milestone Julie. February definitely needs to make it easier for all of us and drop the 'r' (just like they should get rid of leap year's methodology of calendaring)--my kiddos and I always have conversations on what happens to people who are born on leap year. Do they celebrate the day before? Or the day after? ... on non-leap years.