banana belt - revisited
So last week was a bit of that “banana belt” that my husband promised me when convincing me to move to the Black Hills. It was warm and sunny. It almost felt like spring. I found myself thinking that maybe winter was actually over. Yes I know it is January, 7th in the upper Midwest. So no, it wasn’t over. But it got me thinking.
When Carol and I were developing our journal, Seasons of Change ( why yes of course you may purchase it - just go back to my home page and click on “journal”) we struggled with how to acknowledge that change is not neat, does not follow a straight line. We wanted to include some exercises on how nonlinear the process of change is.
The journal is arranged by seasons - it is linear in that way. Autumn is followed by winter, which is followed by spring and summer. There is definately a pattern and rhythm to change. Transitions do follow that big pattern but there are anomalies along the way, which when we don’t expect them, they can throw us off balance. Sometimes it feels like you take one step forward and two ( or twenty-two) steps back.
Just as you get a “spring-like” day in the middle of January, so will you experience change. The Season of Quiet - Winter is a difficult time in transitions because this is the time when everything is so uncertain and confusing. Most of us simply want to get out of it as fast as we can and so when that warm sunny January day arrives, it feels like, “WHEW-maybe this season is over”. We may hope it is because it is hard, scary and uncomfortable to be in the Season of Quiet where nothing makes much sense. But it is not. So today it is cold and snowing and we’re back smack in the middle of winter.
But there is hope. Spring always arrives.