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

Five Minutes of Slow

Joining the Five Minute Friday crew this week and here's how that goes...tell your inner critic to hush, then write for 5 minutes flat for pure unedited love of the written word. Next hop over to Kate Motaung's blog and add your link to the list. Lastly, be sure to leave a comment for the blogger linking before you, because comments keep the blog world spinning. Here we go-

Today's word prompt-slow

Time is a mystery isn't it? It's either moving too fast or too slow for our liking, and it's rare we say the pace is just right. I think learning to make peace with the pace is what leads to contentment, and while I'm always craving blank space in the calendar, I know days and seasons of busy need to happen too.

I have not seen my grandsons in person in 20 months. Baby Max was three weeks old when he last laid his tiny head on my chest and now he's a running, talking, laughing toddler boy. The mancub too, has grown at least a foot and added a hundred million words and questions to his vocabulary, and just saying that makes me want to rewind the clock and replay all the seconds I've missed thanks to geography and a global pandemic. 

Time moves in one direction only though, so we tell it now to hurry. To bring those boys and their parents back to our side of the world pronto and once they're here to please then slow back down so we can savor all the minutes we'll have with them in the flesh instead of facetime. 

Of course time never really speeds up or slows down, but rather is marked by change. The clock ticks, the calendar turns, we grow up and older, and it's neither fast nor slow but rather steady and constant and completely outside of our control. The creator of the universe is the keeper of the clock and thankfully is always right on time. 

Never too late, never too soon, never running behind, never racing to catch up. Always seeing time in all its fullness and acting accordingly. Nudging me to get busy or quietly whispering slow down. Reminding me with the speed or slowness of a moment that while I don't control the clock I do control how I spend what I've been given, and to spend it well. 

"Teach us to realize the brevity of life, so that we may grow in wisdom." Psalm 90:12