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Wintering. It’s a word that keeps coming to the forefront of my mind, a word I hadn’t used until recently but is now part of my vocabulary. It was a word that the second I saw in print I knew without doubt that it described what I had been trying to identify for the last several months. Wintering is the name of a book by Author Katherine May that I have been listening to on audio. It’s not the most enjoyable book, a little dull around the edges, slightly whiney and I find it quite unrelatable. But Katherine May’s use of the word wintering is genius, and I am forever thankful that I stumbled upon it. Katherine describes wintering as a fallow period in life when you’re cut off from the world, feeling rejected, on the sidelines, blocked from progress, or cast into the role of an outsider. It can follow a life change, bereavement, loss of confidence, or perhaps a period of transition where you have temporarily fallen between two worlds.
Wintering did not push itself upon me nor did it creep up on me unknowingly without my permission like an uninvited intruder. No, I chose to winter. I looked for it, called for it and invited in to sit and stay for a spell. Wintering is a gift from my savior, my sabbath, my rest and I want to delight in every minute of it. Wintering has just begun for me and my version of wintering also includes writing. So that is what I shall do, write about it. It’s not going to be easy for me, in fact its going to be downright hard and I’m worried that I will fail. Rest does not come easy to me and that is what is needed to winter well.
These days the alarm starts me awake at 5:30 am, there was a time when my alarm went off much earlier but not these days. Most days I turn it off, pull the covers over my head and cuddle up close to the warm furry body that is pressed against me under the covers, sharing my pillow. I don’t want to get out of this warm bed so I wrap my arms tightly around River, my dog, my face nuzzle into his fur while his soft snoring lures me back to sleep. Soon Jon will wake me with a steaming cup of black coffee placed on my bedside table. He’s already stoked the fire in the wood stove that burned to a heap of grey coals during the night, braving the frigid morning air of our old drafty house. I will sleepily walk to the living room to sit in front of the wood stove trying not to dribble my coffee along the way. I think how lucky I am to have a husband that brings me coffee in bed every morning, but I won’t think of telling him that. I don’t tell him because I feel guilty that he does this for me, I feel as though I am a lazy burden of a wife laying in a big lump in a warm bed. To rest is lazy but to rest while my husband is not, is downright shameful. The shame seeps deep into my pores so much so that I can’t bear to say more than a thank you.
I am not good at rest, whenever I do rest it comes with a giant side dish of shame and guilt. I have an illness that forces me to rest (Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome aka POTS) or I will end up passing out, but I fight it every step of the way. I would rather end up with the humiliation of landing on the ground banged and bruised, it’s less humiliating than saying I need to rest for a minute. Why when God gave me rest do I praise burnout and running hard? Why when I crave simplicity and a slow life do I keep myself busy and push for more? Why does the thought of slowing down and wintering bring bouts of embarrassment and shame?  I need to explore this in myself, in my marriage, in our society and in the farming community. I want to change the way I look at rest, I want to spend this winter resting as much as possible and leaning into God. I have been blessed with the perfect opportunity, for the first time in a decade I am not milking cows or goats, and I am not planning a farmers’ market. I need to be careful not to turn writing about wintering into work, but something enjoyable and restful that feeds my soul. So, though I plan to blog about my experience wintering weekly if I don’t, well that’s okay.
What does rest bring up for you? Does wintering sound as pleasant to you as it does to me?
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With great gratitude to you for reading my ramblings,
Angie
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