A Little While

It takes fortitude to have faith when it is the middle of January.  Gone are the baubles and visits, the cheery drink and food, and the clamor of things to do and do and do.  Packing up and cleaning up are accomplished almost too soon -- leaving order and space.  
And into these come all the worries and doubts, finding room to pull up every available chair and stay.  Confining cold ensures that they are constantly within the walls with me, because it is hard to leave when the air hurts to breathe.

Somehow it is easier to believe and trust when the sun is warm and I can feel the earth growing...because belief is about life, after all.  Winter darkness squeezing at the edges of the daylight threatens to strangle my hope and shroud everything I see with heaviness and gloom.  This is the season of hope deferred -- and hearts become sick with waiting.  

So I take out God's promises and lay them on the table, the counter, the bedspread -- anywhere my eyes might fall on them.  I recount them in my journal, in my conversations, in my thoughts.  I set my "...mind on things that are above, not on things that are on earth."  These are the days I must purpose to see God, because I am easily distracted by my own physical and emotional malaise.  

And -- resolutely -- I clip a bit of dried hydrangea, bake some bread, stoke the fire...and find something to read.


Soon shall the winter's foil be here;
Soon shall these icy ligatures unbind and melt--A little while,
And air, soil, wave, suffused shall be in softness, bloom and
growth--a thousand forms shall rise
From these dead clods and chills as from low burial graves.
Thine eyes, ears--all thy best attributes--all that takes cognizance
of natural beauty,
Shall wake and fill. Thou shalt perceive the simple shows, the
delicate miracles of earth,
Dandelions, clover, the emerald grass, the early scents and flowers,
The arbutus under foot, the willow's yellow-green, the blossoming
plum and cherry;
With these the robin, lark and thrush, singing their songs--the
flitting bluebird;
For such the scenes the annual play brings on.
Walt Whitman