Winter Focus

Winter has been a lot of fun here and also a lot of gray. Do you ever find that? It is amazingly beautiful when the snow if falling in delicate unique flakes all around you. The sun that they sparkles on that pristine whiteness is a gift to see. But when that sun shines for while, those beautiful white flakes turn a dirty gray color as the edges of the mud underneath it starts to show through. When that happens, there really isn’t anything outside that is pretty anymore. In fact it amazing how everything looks like it is the same color. Trees, bushes, houses, streets, everything! So how does one avoid depression with all that gray? I honestly don’t know! But today, since it was 45 degrees, and we have had a bit of a cold here, I thought that getting outside might be good for all of us. Guess what? It was! There is something so great about getting outside and in fresh air! I took the girls to the park to play and was hoping to play with my camera to get some  fun pictures. But with all the gray, it was hard to find anything that caught my eye. But then I got on the playground with my kids and I found something! Something beautiful, happy, full of life and color. The girls. I know, this is nothing new, but somehow I thought that the winter allowed for a chance to focus on the things that matter most! In the winter, the color of nature is dormant, the fun we have outside is curtailed, and there really is not much to do. But there is family. And winter seems like the perfect time to look away from the dull, gray, lonely outside, and focus inward. Toward the family that lights up our lives, and toward the happy faces that make the snow and the gray glow brilliantly together! Somehow that gray cloud seems to become a pretty silver winter atmosphere, and that brilliant snow, becomes a world of color and joy in the presence of people we love. Perhaps that is the reason for this dull gray season with moments of intense brilliance, is to make us look for the color, the joy, and the beauty in the places closest to us. After all, when we are not looking around us for beauty and entertainment, we are able to see the best things we have in their full color right next to us!

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