Turn Around

Today is December 21.  It's the first day of winter.  But it's also the day the sun “turns around.”  The winter solstice (for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere) is that day when our perspective of the sun sees it at the lowest arc in the sky.  The sun peeked over the horizon this morning (at exactly 7:10 Poole Ranch time) at it's most southern point for rising. 

For me, today is good news.  Every day now until late June, the sunrise will occur north of every previous day.  It's a promise of gradually warming weather.  It's the promise of spring, and, of course, summer. 

Today symbolizes a kind of redemption we all secretly hope for.  Up till now nature has been hunkering down for winter.  Winds are always cold now and almost always from the north.  The pasture has turned brown.  The trees and shrubs have gone dormant.  That really won't change much for another three months.  But today is the promise.  Grass will eventually turn green.  Winds will start coming from the south in April.  Daffodils will push up through the snow.  Wild lilies will bloom.  

Brook with the Original Barn in July 2010

It's been a long haul for us since the sun “turned around” back in June and headed south.  We added onto our barn three times this summer and fall and expanded our covered square footage from 144 to 1,296 to make room for more horses.  But our plans took a painful turn when we lost our beloved Brook, Johanna's horse that we've had since the day of the summer solstice in 2010.  Her aching joints, bad teeth and an increasingly chronic esophageal weakness left her often irritable, unable to keep on weight and in daily danger of choking.  We laid her to rest on October 28. 

When we planned to build the barn, we set aside a special stall that we would use for Brook (the stall area of the original barn space built in July 2010).  We planned to “retire” her, reserving her only for entertaining the smallest of children, and letting her live out a few more years in peace and comfort.  But now her planned stall is empty of her presence.  It's filled with soul-less boxes, lumber, barrels and tack.  We weren't able to let her retire.  And now our barn needs redemption.  It stands unable to fulfill one of the primary purposes for which we hoped to have it built.

Final addition to the barn, November 2011

Each morning when I feed the other horses, our sweet Belle and our friends' dear mare, Jubilee, I still grieve.  I look at that empty stall and struggle.  When the chores are done,  I kneel in the sunlight streaming in through the stall doors in the first light of every morning and ask God for redemption.  I ask Him to bring that stall back into some treasured use.  I ask Him to bless us, our children and our friends the way He did with Brook.

But I pray for more than that because I know my barn is also a symbol the story of life all of us live in.  Since we were young we carefully planned and built little shelters for our dreams.  We carefully organized our hopes and tried to make the decisions we really thought were right.  But since I've hit the mid-life thing when I turned 40 a few years back, I've had the increasing sensation that the “sun was going south” on those dreams.  I've looked at the unavoidable reality of those stalls of my heart and realized that some of the structures I've built cannot function to protect those empty places in my heart.
With my knees in the dirt of the barn floor, I've started to pray for those places in my heart as well.  In the context of 43 ½ years of choices and decisions (many of which I seriously question the integrity of) I realize how much my heart-space needs redemption.  

Finished barn with Belle (foreground) and Jubilee

And today, more than I have in a long time, I hope for the return of warm places to my soul.  I feel a little revival of a hope for dreams.  I have a feeling for hope that the rhythms of nature's seasons really do predict the rhythms of an honest soul; that redemption from my poor decisions and restoration for what I've lost or let die or euthanized will actually happen.  I'm letting hope rise just a little that maybe the 2nd half of my life (if I'm blessed to live it out) will hold more redemption than the 1st half has.  That there will come a time in the near future when I will feel the summer south winds blow again and see new and genuine life in the stalls of my heart that have been empty for a long time.

Today I remember the words of a Father's promise: “While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, Cold and heat, Winter and summer, And day and night Shall not cease.” - Genesis 8.22

I hope you will enjoy the winter solstice with me today.

Johanna with Brook on the day of her last ride