About That Snow Day

HopeWriters hosted a five day writing challenge this week, providing a one word prompt each day (slow-rest-renew-spark-possibility). I wasn't going to participate because I felt like these prompts all flowed in a very similar vein, and I wasn't sure I could muster up five separate entries to meet the challenge. 

And then it snowed. 

Snow in our neck of the woods is rare, and while I know its not popular to say here in the southland, I miss it sometimes. While I'm grateful we no longer spend six months of the year worrying about ice damming our gutters or dodging seven foot icicles dropping from the roof like daggers, there are some things about a snowfall that I really do miss. 

I miss the hush that falls over our too-noisy world whenever snow begins to fall. The quiet stillness that hangs in the air reminding us hurry up humans to slow down. There are rhythms in nature and also in life and rest is one of those rhythms.

I miss pulling on my favorite pair of boots for a ramble through a winter wonderland. Trekking across a snowy path energizes me, recharging batteries drained of power by too many Christmas cookies and not enough exercise. 

I miss watching sunlight turn dead brown leaves to diamonds that shine with a million points of light. 

The colors of a winter day against the bright blue canvas of a January sky. Allowing nature to spark creativity through the vastness of her beauty and her silence. 

I miss rosy cheeked children and pups running wild with delight at the freedom found in freshly fallen snow. 

I miss the unique sense of possibility born when a whole day's plans are cancelled...

...and in their place you discover enough white space to think and breathe and dream. 

Linking today with Five Minute Friday and #hopewriterlife

Quiet Spaces and Everyday Graces

This blog has felt a bit quiet in terms of content lately, which is why I signed up for the five-day #hopewriterlife challenge. Ironically, the first word prompt is 'quiet'. 

Hmmm. 

It's never really quiet here. Our calendars are full and usually our guest rooms too, so I'm always looking for blank space somewhere. After a whirlwind August, a whirlwind summer actually, we were forced into a period of rest and stillness by hubs aching back and our dog's emergency belly surgery. 

I don't believe God sent hubs back out of whack or caused the dog to eat that mysterious bit of foam he attempted unsuccessfully to digest, but I do think He uses these types of things to slow us down, to remind us rest is good for the body and soul, and that we need times of quiet to process all the noise of this world. 

Sometimes it feels like there's no escaping the noise, but there's certainly no escaping it when you never remove yourself from it. I have a lot of thoughts, hubs might say too many-ha! and writing has always been a way for me to focus all those thoughts into something that makes sense. 

There are days where not a lot happens here. Most days I'd venture to say, and I imagine most of you would say the same. Life is much more a series of small moments rather than big events, less earth shattering happenings, more laundry and to-do lists. While writing about the everyday ordinary may seem frivolous given the times in which we live, ordinary is nearly always where I land. 

When I write I like to imagine my grandchildren reading my words decades down the road. What do I want them to know about me? What do my words say about the person their grandmother was in the middle of an all CAPS-exclamation point world?

I want them to know my hand was always reaching for the volume, turning it down as I floated into the bright blue beauty of a September day. That I saw mountains meeting clouds and felt small as I remembered where my help comes from. 

That I never stopped looking for quiet spaces in a too noisy world. That contentment lives there, in the most ordinary of days.