I woke up to a snow globe exploding outside my window this morning. Billions of tiny snowflakes flurrying in the bitter winter breeze looked like a scene from a Hallmark Christmas movie dream. Only problem is that it’s MARCH and my patience with winter weather has long expired (and I can’t stand Hallmark movies— please forgive).
It is no secret that I struggle to enjoy winter, even when it has every right to be here. I’m a summer girl, a lover of warm temps. I don’t enjoy freezing ice and snow, or all the layers required to survive them. But it’s been an especially brutal winter here in my southern corner of Idaho. And the frosty temperatures and constant precipitation are just the half of it. The world feels heavy, as it has for years now, and collectively it seems the fatigue of trying to trudge through has finally caught up to us all. We are all tired, and this unwelcome snow is like salt being dumped in our gaping wounds.
I have a tendency to always believe that the best is in front of me, and admittedly struggle to embrace the season I’m in— metaphorically as much as literally. And days like today make me feel trapped, like the world is blocking me from reaching the greener grass I know is growing underneath this wretched snow. Defeated and deflated, I watch as the snowflakes continue to whirl through the frigid sky and my sighing heart is full of questions: Why is this happening? When will the winter end? Will it feel like this forever? Is a new season even on the horizon? How do I keep moving forward?
But in the middle of my pity party, a new question begins to surface, too:
What if I’m missing it?
I’ve been so frustrated and miserable with this never-ending Narnia, with circumstances and situations I cannot change, but what if I’m missing something by asking too many unanswerable questions that don’t do anything to change the world around me?
The weather is out of my control. I can’t change gas prices, global conflicts, disease, or the behavior of others, as much as I wish I could. We are in the winter, like it or not, so I need to decide if I will waste my time complaining about what can’t be changed, or if I will dig under the snowbanks to discover the gifts this season’s been hiding. Instead of treading water waiting for spring to finally come, I can search for the beauty I might be missing, or for the ways I can help right here and right now.
I guess in the end what I’m trying to say is this: I can’t do anything about the cold outside, but maybe, just maybe, I can change the temperature in my heart.