Frigid

I’m a northern type of person who has always lived somewhere where there are four distinct seasons. Growing up in Michigan there were always the standard uniqueness that each season brings. Fresh springs full of beautiful flowers and soft warmth; hot summers with the deep greens of the trees and grass; cooler falls with the spectacular oranges, yellows and reds of the changing trees; and cold winters with the mono chromic white that makes the world seem crisp and clean.

Even when we moved to Nebraska, there were four seasons although it wasn’t as clear cut as it is up north. The summers were always brutally hot because Nebraska is in what is essentially the great American desert. Not filled with sand and rock but endless fields of grass and equally as hot as the desert in the west and southwest. The winters were as brutal as summer because there wasn’t anything to block the cold wind coming across from the Rocky Mountains and that wind could cut you right to the bone. Stepping outside when it was 0 or below would guarantee frozen nose hairs because the cold would make you gasp in shock and then you feel the inside of your nose freeze right up. Not fun.

Now I live in Maine. A land where there are definitely four distinct seasons. I love it here. I really do. I live close enough to the ocean that on a clear day in the summer, I can smell the salty ocean breeze. I live close enough to the White Mountains that I just need to drive an hour or so and I am looking at that beautiful range, so close it feels like I could just touch each peak. Every season has it’s beauty and joy that makes me glad that I live here and can enjoy God’s creation.

That said…it is wicked frigid outside. I don’t mind the cold. I really don’t. But when I lie in bed in the morning and look at the time and temperature projected on my ceiling (from my atomic clock), and it is flashing –3 or –5 or worse, I really want to roll over, bury myself under the covers and hibernate until spring. Was it the right decision back in 1996? Could I have moved somewhere else? Florida? Texas? Hawaii?

Yeah, I probably could have. But I wouldn’t be able to enjoy the four distinct seasons that living in the north allows me to do each year. And this is a temporary situation. It will warm up eventually. The days are getting longer (we have gained 40 minutes of sunshine already) and it is almost the end of January. February is a short month and that only leaves March. If we are lucky, spring may come early this year and April will be warmer and brighter.

I will cling to these thoughts as I am waking up each morning for the foreseeable future. Warmer days are coming. Get up, put your slippers and robe on, make a nice hot pot of tea and pet the cat for a while before facing getting ready for work and starting a very cold car. It will get better. This is a temporary situation, although a very frigid temporary situation.