Lazy W Marie

Carpeing all the diems in semi-rural Oklahoma...xoxo

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worries melting like snowflakes

This morning Handsome and I crept outside for a later-than-usual Hot Tub Summit. The air was cold and gray, the sky already quilted white and releasing a slow, reluctant curtain of snowflakes. We soaked up both the cold and the heat and unbraided ourselves from sleep. With nowhere to go today and a blessedly short list of duties, we had a really easy time staying relaxed. Oklahoma weather teams have been preparing us all week for a snowfall today, maybe an inch. And while we never fully trust the forecast, we did get a little excited. If not for the cold (Handsome belongs only on the beach), then certainly for the unwritten excuse to hibernate. We are happily immersed in season two of Dexter right now. Plus, so much romance… We have lots of ways to pass the time.

While we were sitting in the steaming froth I watched several fat, lazy snowflakes flirt in circles in the cold air around us. They melted easily, even before touching our skin. The steam probably dissolved them. I closed my eyes and took a silent inventory of all the little dagger-shaped worries that have bothered me this week. So many small, panicky moments, so many sudden fears piercing my happiness. Mostly what-if thoughts about my children.

Phantom worries that never came to fruition.

I am so lucky to be nourished by crystal-clear scripture, good literature, the best of friends, and more than my fair share of Love. Basically, grace. Loads and loads of grace. Had those dagger-shaped thoughts landed on a cold heart they might have stuck. They might have pierced me through and drained me of all my life. But instead, they fell over and over again on a warm, healthy place. They melted before they really touched me.

I have nothing against the snow. It’s beautiful and muffled and rare. It is infinitely more pleasurable that ice, after all, so when we get a blanket of the magical stuff I don’t mind celebrating it. I especially don’t mind hibernating with my handsome husband.

In the hours since this morning’s hot tub magic, we have received much more than the single inch the weather folks predicted. The farm is heavily snowed under, thick piles of it everywhere. But the message is still clear to me: Tiny worries melt quickly in the heat of faith and Love. They can pile up too, if we let them.

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Please forgive my mixed metaphors, friends.

More importantly, feed your faith. Nourish you heart and keep it warm. Stay healthy and receptive to the best of things. It helps you resist worry. It helps you stay whole.

Signing off to count my blessings and go watch a baby llama play in the snow.

Thank you for stopping in, friends.
Much love and many melted snowflakes to you.
XOXOXOXO

Senses Inventory: Snowy Frigid Day

Several inches of perfect white snow covering everything all over the farm.
Temperatures in single digits, plus a ferocious wind chill, all week long.
Less than three weeks till Christmas 
and my entire life in suspense, yet perfectly wonderful.
A Senses Inventory is called for.
So I walked out to the lower west pasture, 
past the llamas and to the edge of the pond 
and scribbled in purple ink with unfeeling fingers what I noticed.

See:  Gently sloping hills blanketed in thick, powdery snow. Glowing pale blue, it’s so white. Snow criss-crossed with llama tracks. Llama tracks overlapping each other, dissecting the fields into beautiful, quilted hexagon patches. The quilted field merging visually into the quilted sky. Gray and blue, dark white clouds sewn together with irregular silver and gold rivulets of exposed sky. Prairie grasses, dry and golden blonde, standing tall above the snow, waving so gently you might not notice a deer creeping past. Pine Forest to the north, mammoth-tall and stoic, calm, frozen, peaceful. Size and strength masking a deep complexity, secrets beyond the obvious. The tree bark there is all onyx and glossy, flocked and frosted white in crowded little poofs, the sprawling branches piled up generously with this miraculous snow. Soaked. Steady. I glance around and see the llamas watching me, their always fuzzy snouts also flocked like they’ve been feasting on powdered sugar.

Hear:  Of course the snow mutes everything, hushes it, but it also amplifies small sounds. My moccasin boots crunch gently through the perfect drifts. A bird flies overhead and I can hear its wings flap. I hear the dry gliding sound of one gust of wind delivering snow across my path.

Smell:  Very little. Everything smells so… clean. Scraped clean to the bone. Purified. I can just barely smell pine perfume, and maybe one little trace of a neighbor’s fireplace.

Touch:  Cold wind, biting, slicing, frigid. Jeans against my legs now as cold as marble. Tiny oval shaped hay seeds clinging to every side of my knit gloves. Hands beneath them, numb, feeling huge. So weird. My face is glowing with cold. This notebook flaps in the wind, spineless.

Taste:  Remnants of homemade fudge, sweet and rich, dark chocolate wonderfulness. Salty green olive juice still in my mouth, too. Luxurious snow-day food.

Think:  I keep thinking I see a wolf run across my peripheral. I have often seen coyotes here in broad daylight, but a wolf? Do we have those? Thinking about how people lived in this deep winter one hundred years ago. Thinking about the extremes that might drive a person to cannibalism. Wondering what I might cook for dinner. Probably not a person.

Feel:  Peaceful. Calm. Feeling very blessed and protected. Excited for Christmas, however different it is once again. Feeling less nostalgic than I usually do, much more in this beautiful moment. Feeling anxious to get back indoors and drink piping hot black tea and write in my gratitude journal.

Have you paused for an inventory of your senses lately?
I would be so happy to get a little glimpse of your world.
Please share a detail of what you sense around you.

Thanks for stopping in at the W…
XOXOXOXO