Make it Through Winter

The view out my office window right now is strangely deceptive.  Nothing but blue skies.  No clouds.  No snow to be seen on the hillside across the way, unless you look really hard. 

But I know it is cold.  So cold that when you step outside it makes you inhale a sharp breath. 

Too cold.

The beginning of the new year has been one for the books.

I'm still processing the coldness, the weather changing. It seems kind of symbolic.

My heart aches, but it is a sadness I don't have words for.  It's one that I really can't comprehend.

I spent yesterday in a daze.  I had so much to do, housework and schoolwork, yet I sat there. 

Yet I have peace.

My Mom made the comment the other day that this would make six funerals for her in two weeks.  Endings in 2013, beginnings in 2014... winter time, with the trees bare and the wind howling...

but then there is the sun outside my window.  While not yet warm, I know that heat will come.

I know that even in death, there is life, and there is purpose, and that it really isn't as senseless as it seems.

Weeeping endures for the night, and joy comes in the morning.

So, today, I work.  I look ahead to classes next week, knowing that even as the world feels like it has stopped, it's still spinning.

And I look up, to Jesus, the author and finisher of my faith.  He's writing my story right now, even as I don't know where it is going. 

He writes them all. 

And death, which seems final, really isn't.  He will say, "Well done, my good and faithful servant.  Ener into the joy of the Lord."

We just have to make it through the winter... make it through the night.