A Year of Gratitude – March 21, 2024

Gratitude found its way to me through a blustery day. Our weather turned cold overnight. There were even a few snowflakes swirling around when I looked outside around midnight.

The winds really picked up overnight. We’ve lived here at the farmhouse for almost 19 years and the winds these last two years have been unlike anything we have experienced in all the years prior. It’s now increasingly common for us to have winds that would have only been witnessed during hurricane season.

The howling winds got loud enough overnight to wake up a sleeping Penny Lane. Then the no longer sleeping Penny woke me up. She wanted to come lay down next to me for comfort. Once I heard how loud the winds were, I was happy to have her next to me.

Of course, she fell right back to sleep after I snuggled her up under her favorite blanket. In a few minutes, I found myself kept awake by the winds while she was snoring softly.

Before I managed to fall back asleep, the winds began to blow with such a force that you could hear the house flex with the force of it. I reminded myself that this house has stood since the 1840s and it was going to be standing tall in the morning.

When I woke up this morning, Penny Lane was staring me right in the face. I’m fortunate that she is polite enough to wait for me to awaken in spite of the fact that she is surely counting the seconds until I rise up and get her breakfast. I rewarded her patience by getting up and heading into the kitchen.

The wind was still whipping dried leaves around in the backyard. A few limbs were down. It was going to be a noisy, blustery sort of day.

The wind continued on all day. I headed outside mid-afternoon to check on the animals. One of barn doors had been blown open by the pressure from the wind. I closed it up and pulled the hasp tight. The chickens and ducks were happy in their outside runs. During the winter, I cover their runs with tarps and plastic to shield them from the wind and cold. I stopped in to see the hens and they were toasty and warm thanks to the sunshine. While it was far too noisy outside, they were safe from the winds.

As I walked behind the old barn, I caught sight of a pair of old tree trunks that had been toppled by the wind. They had been giants in their day, although from the look of the trunks, that day had been years ago, maybe longer. Today, they couldn’t find the strength to stand any longer. They gave in to the wind.

They weren’t fully down, but they were headed there. I was taken by their scale, by the space left by the roots that had toppled over with the weight of them when they went. I couldn’t help but notice that the last edge of those roots was still holding on, keeping those trunks from fully toppling over.

I know that those old, dry roots won’t be able to hold on forever. Eventually, the weight of the trees will pull just enough to loosen the roots and then the whole thing will fall.    It will come to rest in the woods. It isn’t close enough to the house or the barn to cause damage. But it will fall. When it does, the ground this old farmhouse stands on will shake. We’ll feel it and we’ll know what has happened outside before we can put on coats and boots and head outside to survey this spot for ourselves.

Sometimes, you just know that something is going to fall both figuratively and literally. Knowing doesn’t make it any easier to accept that it will fall. It just takes surprise out of the equation and becomes an inevitable reality.

It’s easier to accept when it is a hollow tree trunk, much harder to accept when it is something more personal, more important to you. But sometimes acceptance is the only option. And so, we accept realities we don’t choose, inevitabilities that we can’t outrun. It’s just too exhausting not to.

I also know that strong roots can make the impending fall land more softly. The people in our lives can help us hold onto something for just a bit, to temper gravity and slow the pace that something we care about is crashing towards the Earth below.

I am willing to bet that the people who act as those roots in your life are the very best sort of people. I know because they certainly are in mine. I’d be lost without them and getting battered by life’s harsh winds if I didn’t have their support to rely on.

I didn’t linger too long near these trees. It was too windy. I could hear tree limbs groaning under the weight of themselves as they danced in the wind. It was time for me to get back into the farmhouse and out of the cold wind.

The wind is still blowing outside tonight although it has eased a bit. Penny has been napping for hours completely unbothered by it. I’ll join her soon and hope that we’ll have a more restful night of sleep. Tomorrow, I’ll wake up to greet the day ahead and the challenges it brings my way. I’ll be grateful to have strong roots and the support of the people I love to help me stand tall through it.

This post is part of our A Year of Gratitude Series. You can find the introduction, inspiration, and entire year’s gratitude’s posts here.