Wicked Rural Homestead
Live Simply
Frozen New Year
In 2017 I started more drafts of posts that have gone unpublished than ever before. There is so much I have felt I needed to say but I lack the time to get them to a place worth sharing. These scattered unfinished thoughts have been the benchmark of this past year for me. It is ironic that during the most impotent year of my existence a new life stirs in my belly.
2017 has brought overwhelming feelings of inadequacy and ineptitude, not knowing where to start or where I am headed. It has been hard to find hope and yet this is the time when I need hope more than ever before.
As in so many years passed, work overtook my life. Too often, I put it first and that might be my one regret. I do not lament the time I spent with my coworkers but it came at the cost of time spent at home with family. That being said, the relationships I forged there became a great asset after the news of this new impending change. I could hardly have wished for more supportive group of people to help me through the transition and fear.
This past week brought holidays and some interesting climate of its own. I had to work Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and New years Eve. There was heavy snowfall for the first two auspicious dates adding an hour to my drive and making for roads that were “under there somewhere…”
There was a bonus ice storm, which further extended my commute and increased the difficulty ten fold. I wanted nothing more to be home with family for the holidays but with everyone thousands of miles away and many work obligations that was just not in the cards this year.
The up side to the crappy weather and my need to be out in it- was the views of an amazing white Christmas in rural Maine and New Hampshire.
The ice storm had gilded the trees and made crystal forests that caught the morning light in a way that puts electric decorations to shame.
The little towns I drive through did their best to look like a Rockwell winter postcard they did a pretty good job.
As the sun rises on this new year and Persephone’s kicking make sleeping-in hard to do I can’t help but be a little excited. For the first time in a long time I actually feel like this year will be different from the last. On the heals of that thought comes equal anxiety and hope for what those changes will be.
This last year my husband and I have grown closer, even before we found out we were expecting. Thanks to years of parenting with him I have no fear about what type of dynamic the little one will bring. I know from many of my friends that this can be the biggest hurdle when expecting a child. It will be a change to have one of the kids around all the time but I am very excited that he will get so much time with this one. He is such an excellent father.
I am grateful above all else- thankful I get to experience the process of creating life, an experience I had begun to doubt I would ever be a part of. I am awestruck at the cultural climate and still hopeful that logic, love and science will be the measure of our judgments and the basis for our decisions as a nation. I am equally dubious that we will be bringing our little girl into a world where they are not.
We have to move forward together in peace and love if we are to get anywhere worth going. Like my recent driving, the going might be slow at times and the conditions treacherous but we are going to a place worth getting to. Whenever I am faced with difficult decisions I ask myself if I am acting out of fear or love. Fear will often masquerade as practicality or convention when it is actually a loss of kindness and compassion or an excuse to treat others poorly.
Beware of justifications that require a tightening of the heart in order to relax the mind. It is encouraging that all it takes is a little change in temperature to turn snow into rain. Remember to keep your heart warm. It is when these things are the hardest to do- that they matter the most.
Be well and happy New Year!
Wicked Rural Homestead 
Happy New Year.
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Thank you, You too!!! Be well.
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