The Coldness That Seeps In
A cold late autumn evening--the house is warm enough, but it has cracks and broken places that let the cold seep insidiously inward, chilling me deeply in spite of the temperature of the air, which is fine.
My heart, too, is broken, and the cold seeps into it as well, in spite of all I do to keep it at bay. Indeed, my heart is fractured and fissured so badly it's a wonder it hasn't frozen solid and shattered into pieces. Perhaps it has: it aches so.
The nights are long and somehow darker now; the darkness comes earlier. The chickens go "to bed" in their coop early, when there's still plenty of fading daylight left: why? Are they overcome by the darkness, too?
I move through my nights and days like Dickinson's very apt description:
"The Feet, mechanical, go round--
Of Ground, or Air, or Ought--
A Wooden way
Regardless grown,
Of Quartz contentment, like a stone--"
Mechanical motions, yes. Getting things done, but finding little meaning in them. The coming of the holidays, once a cause of great joy, now are harbingers of pain--the "family" times with a broken family are quite changed. And with a downsizing move on the horizon, all the holiday decorations will have to go to make way for a simpler life. Less tinsel, but more substance?
If not more, at the very least, a refocusing on the deeper joy that sustains me in my heartache times. I can still give thanks at Thanksgiving, can still rejoice in the entry of the greatest Love penetrating the darkness of the world at Christmas.
That Love, if I let Him, can put the broken pieces of my heart back together, and He, alone, can truly keep out the cold.
