'Twas the Write Before Christmas: {Day 1}

 I've lived my entire life in the Midwest.  As the last fall leaf reached the ground and the air grew colder and heavy with snow, I braced myself for months and months of cold, dark winter.

In my childhood, I hated being outside for too long in the winter.  My asthmatic lungs gasped for breath, unsure how to rescue the oxygen from the frozen air.

I remember the first year our neighbor's granddaughter came over to play.  She was from Florida and only saw snow once a year on her trips to her grandma's house.  She begged us to play outside, much longer than I preferred.  She even built an igloo one year and sent me on a scavenger hunt to find her.  I remember wondering what the big deal was...after all, it was just snow.

But there is something magical and beautiful about snow.  That first snowfall seems to stop time, because we can't seem to keep our eyes from the beauty of a world covered in white, sparkling in the sunlight. 

I still have a love/hate relationship with snow.  My dad called it a four-letter-word.  Because, that first snowfall loses its charm after months and months covered in its dark coldness.  I sit in my warm, comfortable home dreaming of the day when the sun will come out again, melt away the snow, and welcome us back out of our cozy cocoons.

We all go through seasons in our own lives.  The winters of our lives are the hardest, darkest, loneliest ones.  It is in the winter that I lose my way, desperate for the sun to shine again.  And the moment that first flash of green peeks through the snow, I breathe a sigh of relief. 

It's that relief that knows I've lived, survived, arrived in spring.  For, as hard as the winter is, the spring always comes.

But there's still something about winter that never ceases to hold us captive.  Because the winter is when we grow and learn.  It is in the hardest seasons of my life that He refines me, renews me, and revives me.  Without the snow, I wouldn't know the beauty of a simple blade of grass.  And without the winter, I wouldn't know the blessing of spring. 

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This post is part of Bigger Picture Blogs' series, 'Twas the Write Before Christmas, a prompt a day to encourage us to share our story and give our gifts as a small creative respite from the busy, crammed full of things to be done, holidays.  (The picture and event button are from Day One's post and the prompt was simply Snow.)