March is Too Cold!

When I used to live in "that other place", March was the good month of the year. The miserable cold, like when it got down to 70 degrees and we all huddled by our heaters in our cold stone houses, had passed. The weather was warming up, but had not yet got to that "kill you if you step outside" heat. March was nice.

My brain is trying to tell me, "March, nice, winter must be almost over; spring will come." But March is one of those months. February warmed up a little at the end and gave us hope; March came in with a vengeance and stole that hope. Even my kids who love sledding and building ice forts are tired of the cold. Their gloves and boots begin to smell like a old, wet dog with bowel issues. The snow and ice that is left is a dreary brown from frozen mud mixed in, and we are tired of winter!

And now my furnace is dying... every morning, I wake up to a freezing house and have to go relight the stupid thing. My morning commune with the spiderwebs and old rusty giant in the basement. It isn't worth doing much to it right now, but wait until summer when we might get a deal on one. It just makes it that much harder to crawl out of bed in the morning!

Life is going on here, but I feel like we are in a holding pattern waiting for spring. It's been a long wait.

This weekend, life will get busy here. We have team meetings, planning meetings, and work with our extended team all gathered here. This will bring me face to face with our team leader. You know, my husband's best friend. You know, the man who thinks I have a psychological problem. The man who has believed everyone of my husband's angry lies over the last few years.

It is so easy to want to defend myself. I could do it so quickly. I was not jokingly called, "lawyer without books" for nothing as a child. But it would not be the best approach. I feel that the best approach here is the same as in 1 Peter - to be gentle and quiet in spirit and to win without words. But I have another picture in my head. I think about the scene in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe where someone dared to accuse one to Aslan. The witch tried to accuse, and the Lion roared, and the witch went running. Another time, one of their own tried to accuse on of Aslan's followers, and they never tried that again. I try to remember that. And my prayer is, "Father, do You see what this man is saying about Your daughter?" Let God deal with it.

If only it were so easy to make a decision and stick with it without wavering. Ah, no..

So pray that I stick to that. It is so easy to want to defend myself, to accuse, to open up his eyes. Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to force someone to open their eyes. So pray I stick to keeping a gentle and quiet spirit, and let God deal with His own.

I think, also, one day there will have to be some accounting. One day, the person responsible for telling the team leader all these lies will have to rectify the situation. But that day is probably not now, not yet. All in good time, in God's time.