A Year of Gratitude – March 24, 2024

Mother Nature gave me my gratitude today. It also gave me something to be ungrateful for, just for a few hours. It was the reminder of that balance that I was grateful for.

Our weather has been a roller coaster this past week. We’ve had warm sunny days. We celebrated the arrival of the first day of spring without a single flake of snow on the ground, a rare occurrence for us. We had high winds that brought down tree limbs. Then we followed it up with snow, heavy rain, sleet, and temperatures cold enough to freeze it into a layer of ice.

It was that combination of snow, rain, sleet, and ice that tested my patience. Our power flickered several times last night, but it stayed on. With each flicker, it was a reminder that there are so many things beyond my control. I may not like that reminder, but it’s a truth I have to accept.

I can’t control the weather. I can’t control when the winds blow with hurricane forces weekly as they have the last year. I can’t prevent the old trees from giving way from the stress and strain of this new weather pattern. I certainly can’t control the temperatures which seem to bounce by 20 or more degrees each week.

I definitely couldn’t control the tree limbs up the street that fell on a power line early this morning, knocking power out to the homes on our street.  I woke up early to discover that our power was out. The farmhouse was cold. There was no electricity to make morning coffee. There was not Wi-Fi to jump on my laptop and respond to comments from overnight.

There was only a sleeping dog next to me and the sunshine streaming in the windows. I was grateful for that sleeping dog. Penny Lane snuggled up close to me and I was much warmer for it. I resolved myself to meditate in the quiet, to quiet the voice in my head that was already marching through all the what ifs and maybes.

What if the power doesn’t come back on by mid-morning? What if I need to get out the generator? Maybe I would need to break away a bit of the ice in order to move the generator into position. How many gas cans did I have that were already full and ready to keep the generator going? Which pieces should I plug into the generator to keep everyone warm and safe?

Using the generator is a bit like a puzzle. You can only produce so much power, so you have to make choices between a pellet stove for heat, the refrigerator to keep food safe and cold, the router to bring back the Wi-Fi. My head was already doing the math, trying to determine what combination was right.

It’s no wonder I felt the need to meditate. I needed to quiet that voice, to convince it to take a deep breath. I closed my eyes and slowed my breathing. I imagined the image I use when I need to meditate in stressful situations. I concentrated on my breath, on the feeling of the breath, on inhaling and exhaling. I could feel Penny Lane breathing next to me.

We snuggled for about an hour, just being there in the quiet house, snuggled together against the cold. Under our pile of blankets, it was warm and cozy.

It’s amazing how two things that are opposite can fill the same space. Under the blankets, I was warm and cozy, I was content and happy with the company of my dog. It was peaceful. Outside of the blankets, it was cold and things were not as they should be.

It wasn’t much longer before the power was restored. The house came back to life. The pellet stove woke up and started to feed pellets to create a new fire to warm up the house. The electronics came back on, beeping and making their noises all at once. It was a cacophony of sounds that would have normally sounded chaotic and overwhelming, but today it was the sound of power returning. It was so welcome.

I got up to start the day. I fed Penny her breakfast. She went outside to her back yard and surveyed the icy, messy landscape. She was not impressed. I think that she much preferred the conditions just a few days ago when it was grassy and warm enough for us to take a morning walk together.

I went outside to tend to our animals and do my morning round of farm chores. It was sloppy, but the sunshine was bright and warm. I was grateful not to need to move the generator, not to need to do the mental math of what to plug in and for how long.

As I finished my chores, I heard our woodpecker in the distance. It was pecking away at a tree like this morning was just a morning like any other. I watched a finch flit about from a branch on the nearby tree.

There’s so much going on in the world at all times. The push and pull, the perceived good and bad. It can be so difficult to take it in, to react to what needs to be reacted to without being overwhelmed by it all.

There’s beauty in that duality. It’s not always easy to see or to appreciate, but it is there. It was there for me this morning when I was grateful for the power coming back on. Sure, I would have preferred it to have never gone out, to have woken up to the house I expected and full power, but that’s not what Mother Nature had in store for me.

The day had other plans for me. It was up to me to decide what to do with them.

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.