Category: Personal

You start to feel Winter turning…

“Tomorrow is always fresh, with no mistakes in it.” – Anne Shirley, Anne of Green Gables, L.M. Montgomery

New Year’s Day is upon us, bringing 2025. I can’t help but thinking about how 2020 and on seemed like a rehashing of the same Groundhog Day-like scenario, until in 2024 it began to feel like the gear in the world’s clock had finally unstuck. I don’t know what it was that brought about the unsticking, maybe it was that Covid was starting to become a memory, or maybe it was a bullet flying through the midsummer sky, but the clock began to tick foward again. But while 2024 did bring a feeling of resumed forward motion, it also brought it’s heartache.

I don’t want to make this part too long, and I may write about it more later in its own post, but our Old Time Scotch Collie, Rowdy, had a series of health issues starting in 2023 that culminated in us learning he was having seizures. We were late getting home after church in August, where we’d been planting hydrangeas in front of the foyer, to find him foaming at the mouth and his back legs not working. After the initial panic and quickly getting him outside, we realized that it could only be a seizure. After that, we had him sleep in the room with us indefinitely, and since then, his seizures have progressed to the point that we have had to put him on medication. It’s been really hard. He’s scared to go to sleep at night, so none of us are sleeping, and we hate the lethargy from the medication. The medication was started just a few days ago, so that’s how we’re entering the New Year.

The other heartbreak was that a very close loved one was diagnosed with cancer, and for privacy reasons I don’t want to get detailed about it, but it’s a situation we’re covering in prayer right now.

On the happier side, I’ve been more active in our church, and even been dipping my toes into a ministry role in coordination with others. It’s been challenging and rewarding at the same time. The year closed with me organizing a huge Christmas party for the Women’s Ministry, and though I could never be defined as a “social butterfly,” I think it was a success.

In my planner I wrote down a few goals last year. Let’s look at how I did, shall we?

• Learn to bake bread
Yes, I got a good start on this. Jon had bought me a Le Creuset bread oven for Christmas the year before, even though I had only baked a couple of sort-of successful loaves, and I love it. I mostly focused on perfecting the Basic Bread recipe from King Arthur Baking School (still working on the “perfect” part), but I also made a couple of sourdough loaves.

• Play with Rowdy at a park
Sadly, Rowdy was so busy with other things that this did not get worked on. However, some dietary changes have improved his behavior and made him easier to manage, so this could be on the horizon. I can’t make it a goal for 2025, because to be honest it’s painful to try to think beyond just reducing the number and severity of his seizures.

• Learn & get ready to perform “Carol of the Birds” on the mandolin for Christmas
LOL! No, this did not happen. Not even close.

• Make key projects from Elizabeth Zimmermann’s Knitting Workshop.
I made the color pattern hat again a couple of times. Does that count? What I did learn is that I need to go a couple of needle sizes down to get a fabric I like; that’s what making the color pattern hat taught me this time.

• Learn baking from the King Arthur Baking School book
I did start on the first section, which is bread. And not from the Baking School book, but I did start baking a lot more often–pies, scones, tarts, etc.–which has made the fear factor go down quite a bit. I’ve always baked pies, but so rarely that every time I had to do it there would be a moment of dread, and sometimes abandonment as a result. That feeling is pretty much gone.

I don’t think I did that badly. Truth be told, I probably did better than most years. I feel satisfied with what I got done, considering all the unexpected events that occurred in 2024, and I think I can go into the New Year, if not feeling exactly encouraged, with a little hope.

I want to keep my goals for 2025 modest. Usually I go in with huge reading lists and too many plans that I can’t follow through on. But we’re sort of in desperation mode as far as time goes. So I’m going to limit it to the following:

  • Read the Bible more – I just want to get a habit of reading it daily and recording what I learn.
  • Knitting a sweater – using the Knitting Workshop book.
  • Baking through the Bread section in the King Arthur Baking School book – I would feel really happy if I could turn out nice sandwich bread and move on through the section.
  • Drawing every day – in my planners, sketch journal, and a sketchbook I got to draw pictures of Rowdy.
  • Hybrid Calisthenics & Interval Walking Training – I started using a Hybrid Calisthenics routine in the last quarter of 2024, and I’m working on consistency.
  • Forming better housework habits – I have a lot of work to do in this area.

Notice that besides the Bible reading, there aren’t any reading goals. It’s the first time in many years I’ve not had a single reading goal.

I’ve given up thinking, “Maybe next year will be better. Maybe there won’t be any trouble and I can accomplish something.” There’s no point to it, because it’s out of my control. All I can do is choose (my word for 2024) how I react to the challenges I encounter, and try to be like Jesus in the face of them. But still, it’s impossible not to feel like the New Year is a time to start fresh.

The New Year turns in the darkest part of the year, just after the shortest day, and with its turning you start to feel Winter turning slowly into Spring. It’s not there yet, but you can smell it, not far off. And if you’ve been struggling through Winter, if your heart has been breaking, if you’ve been a witness to suffering or have been suffering yourself, New Year’s Day can feel like a glimmer of hope in the midst of all that darkness.

Have a Happy 2025.

Grace

Our Last Winter Here?

Is this our last winter in this house? Jon asked the question last night as we lit the first Advent candle. We’ve been looking at a piece of property in town, and apart from the price, it seems perfect for our needs.

This little house has been a struggle to love. It’s just a shoebox with a garage attached; Jon owned it when we married, and because of the malaise that settles in when you’re just getting by, he had not done much to it except paint the interior. It felt non-descript, unloved, and more like a rental. There’s no privacy to speak of; because of the situation of the property, both front and back yards are visible from streets lined with similarly non-descript houses, the “contractor specials” of the booming ’90s: small houses made from cheap materials with as little personality as possible. When I first came here, having grown up in the woods, I felt watched from every angle. I wanted to move as soon as we could.

But the town where I grew up and where we go to church has gentrified, house prices skyrocketing and then skyrocketing again. So we stayed. The neighborhood has been quiet and relatively safe. We tried (and mostly failed) to grow a garden, the high desert winds and extremes of heat and cold making it difficult–not to mention, a septic leach field on a quarter of an acre; we’ve only grown food in a raised bed and Greenstalk towers. We’ve made cosmetic changes to the bathrooms and put in some new doors, but with no space to work, and high winds picking up whenever you venture outside to do something, the new trim and other doors have had to wait. All along, I’ve fought between the strong desire to move, and the understanding that moving probably was out of reach. I determined over and over again to make the little house feel loved, like people who loved it lived here, so the next people who came would love it and feel loved by it, too.

A new paint job and beautiful black door with an owl-shaped knocker. The name of Jesus carved into the stump left from a juniper we cut down. A fence to keep the dog in and that, surprisingly, made the lot feel larger. A little shed, with windows added just because. Slowly, it started to feel like a home. The final thing, and surely the best, was the cast-iron woodstove, small but putting out so much heat we can’t keep the fire going after 11 o’clock. The woodstove made the house feel finally cozy and like it had a personality of its own. The house had become a home.

The idea that we might move after all these years is captivating and scary at the same time. Right now, we’re holding our breath, because the property we want costs too much and we need to have a place for my mom on it as well. I’ve no idea if we’ll really do it, if we’ll really be able to buy it and build a life closer to town and our church and the people we love. But sitting there in front of the Advent wreath last night, I knew that in spite of all the problems, when we do go, I will surely miss this little place.

Grace