Will Winter Ever End?

I shot this photo during our first snow fall and something about the gate and the lock seemed significant.

Yet, as winter persisted, the image seemed to suggest to me that suffering from a chronic illness might resemble being caught behind the gate inside of a forever winter, while the healthy stroll free through eternal spring.

At the thought, I shook my head, resentment blooming. I tried to feel and move on. I also recalled sayings from recent podcasts and audio books such as everyone suffers. Resilience is the ability to re-frame. Sit with your emotions.

 But all that did not help then.

Truth was and is that the problem with books and podcasts, at least for me, is complicated. I love them but I drink them the way I drink a green smoothie, hoping the secret to a long and well-lived life resides in the words of others. And unfortunately, I shall never be quenched. Reputable strangers words tumble like great, shiny locks over me then, poof, disappear, and then I am left with the strange sense that I am still the same old me.

Unchanged.

Still standing amidst winter behind the gate.

Perhaps that is the whole point: to spend less time focusing on others’ words or looking out, waving at the eternal spring strollers. Instead, why not turn toward the snowy garden and begin to accept its place, even its silent majesty, the footprints of a fox, the flash of a cardinal flittering between branches of a bare tree. And maybe, maybe even notice the wedge of sunlight beaming on the untouched snow, a sign that even here spring will be coming.