Winter is Officially Here

For so many people, winter is viewed as a time of rebuilding. They see the plants go dormant, the snow come down and blanket the plants as a protective covering, the shorter days, and they see life rebuilding and repairing itself in preparation for spring.
Myself, I see winter as a time of breaking. It's been this way for years for me. If I'm going to struggle and fight with something, I more than likely will be dealing with it in the winter. Being cooped up more, dealing with the shorter days, looking at the barren landscape. It all causes me to re-evaluate where I stand and to attempt to change the things bothering me. So often, this is the time that my fears and feelings of inadequacy come back to me. And it's the time of year that I feel like something inside of me is breaking. Not breaking to the point of no return, but breaking so that I can be rebuilt.

Yesterday was our pastor's final sermon before moving. He spoke about fear, about stepping out into the unknown. And as he spoke, I began to see the last few weeks for what they were. My own fight against the season of breaking. I fight it every year. I try to push through it by keeping myself busy. Believing that if I ignore it, I won't have to do it again. This year, it snuck up on me a little bit. I didn't prepare for it, I didn't see it coming. So when it came, I was knocked off my feet by it a little. Little by little, the restlessness moved back in and I started floundering.

I don't know how long it will take me to work through this. So today I decided I had to deal with it. I baked and cooked, did laundry, went through my knitting projects to reorganize them, and molded soap for Christmas. I feel hollow tonight. I can feel the breaking. I know where it's centered and I know I need to stop fighting it. But some days? Some days I just want to escape back to summer. This isn't easy. It's emotionally exhausting.