Embracing Life's Seasons

 

My Special January Flavour

I started the year on a bang, January was all things sweet and spicy just like any girl would like it, and then bang February arrived with a vengeance that among others not only saw me use the word shovelling almost daily but also get to do the actual shovelling which I hated with a passion. I kept asking myself how the hell this had become my reality especially as the scene that played out in my life was only one I had previously seen only in movies. And yes, I rose to the occasion, I did what I had to do and the time came and went and with it a change in the weather mainly Spring being officially here albeit not yet ready to take off. And how so much like my life, the winter winds continue to blow, but like it or not spring has come forth and at some point the flowers will blossom.

 

I grew up in a tropical environment, seasons there are something you read about but never actually experience unless you are a farmer who has to look out for the rainy season to sow and sunny season to harvest. So the 4 seasons in true sense, Winter, Spring, Summer and Autumn are truly a foreign concept to me.  After my first encounter with winter some many years ago, the darkness, the headaches, the endless cold and colds that come with it,  I decided I for one didn’t care about seasons and yet here I am in a place that is on record for one of the worst hit  winter 2014/2015.

Magnificent  Effect of the Winter Blues

 

Looking back now that the worst is over ( I hope it is )after all spring is officially here, I can’t help but reflect on how so much like  the different seasons our lives are, the ups, the downs, the 'in-betweens', that no matter what always bring a new day. In the last 3 months I have said the word crossroads so much that I hope I never have to use it ever again in my life but then again seasons come, they go and they come again; And even in the darkest of winter there is light.  It is not for nothing that King Solomon wrote "To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven." Ecclesiastes 3:1. So yes, the crossroads were many that at one point it didn’t make sense to take one day at a time but hour by hour gradually the days became weeks, the weeks became months and the season became Spring, an optimistic time.

And yet looking back winter was not all bad, when I took the time to smell the coffee, there was beauty in the clean sheet of white that covered everywhere and in between my blurred days, there was light; the innocence of a special child who charmed her way into my life and daily  reminds me so much of the kid in me, encouraging words from who better else than 4 prisoner friends that I receive in the sweet traditional way of a letter in an envelope from miles and miles away, a job to wake up to (winter would be slow with no paid activity) and above all love from family and friends, even across the miles that is always looming in the background no  matter the season.

My winter baby Uche is full of life no matter the season...

 

And as the earth once again changes its position around the sun, I pray that I might not use the word “crossroads” in the near future but better still that I might have the wisdom to understand that just as in the realm of nature everything in life has its own season and in due season I will reap; Joy comes in the morning.