Winter Grinch

I confess: Last year's winter turned me into a grinch.

Sometime in February, I began to think of winter as the "long dark tea time of the soul" (thanks to Douglas Adams who coined the phrase and wrote this book).

With snow on the ground since Thanksgiving and four major ice storms that brought down innumerable tree branches (many of which still need to be cleaned up), it was a very long and very difficult winter.

The older I become and the more arthritis pain I experience, the less I anticipate winter. But this fall, it was not merely that I failed to anticipate winter; it was a case of definite dread.

That dread was compounded with denial when I saw snow began to fall last Saturday afternoon. By Sunday morning, a fluffy blanket of about three inches covered the ground and clung to every tree branch.

When I took Libby out about 5:00 on Sunday morning, the snow was still falling from a cloudy night sky. But a strange light suffused the atmosphere and glowed almost as bright as moonlight.

It was hauntingly beautiful.

I acknowledged winter; I acknowledged the first snowfall; and I acknowledged the Giver of beauty, who promises that "while the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease" (Gen. 8:22, ESV).

The cycle of the seasons ought to be embraced for what it is: a precious gift from God.