Moments of Clarity

I was looking back through a journal I kept after my marriage ended sixteen months ago...this is an excerpt from December 2005...a month after my nearly 20-year relationship ended ... It was written during a time of confusion and pain yet looking back upon it today I find clarity where I once thought was none ...

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It is winter here. A time of rest. A time of waiting. Seeds lay dormant in the earth awaiting the first rays of the spring sun. Grass sleeps beneath its blanket of snow. It doesn’t question the need for winter any more than it questions the coming of spring. It just accepts what is.

A bamboo tree lives on the corner of my dresser. Each leaf perfectly formed and each day it grows into a grander version of itself in spite of me. It does not question its new surroundings. It embraces what is.

Outside my window I can see the mountain ash towering over the neighbour’s fence. The red berries act as beacons for the birds they are meant to feed. Even in winter, there is life just as there is sacrifice.

And as much as we’d like to believe that the world stops with us when we pause, it does not. We are invited to go with it. We are asked to accept. We wish to embrace. And we strive to be grateful even in the coldest of times.

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What a difference a year makes!