blue orb, originally uploaded by bbmarie.

I have been working on these pieces about depression for a certain magazine this past week. It is deep winter in Michigan these days and the garden is covered up with a thick blanket of snow and ice. I feel like some of my life is covered over with snow and ice like the back yard and it can feel sad yet I remind myself that this is the season to be frozen. It is important to know what season you are currently in so you can yield to how it wants to shape you. Sometimes I wonder if we need to find ways to connect with our sadness, sit with it, feel it and let it do its work in us. I want to be more connected with the world outside of my house where the furnace kicks on and off to regulate the heat. I want to walk around outside under the trees and feel the icy wind on my face, feel the tug of the dog on its leash and notice what the trees look like when they are naked. I want to notice l how warm her shit feels in the plastic bag as I pluck it out of the snow. I want to let my life become naked like the trees…. stark, mostly charcoal grey and ash brown. I think there are times appointed for us to feel our emptiness, our aloneness, our souls hunger. We need to become hungry and week even before we experience God’s power. We need to be the Israelites running for our lives through the parted sea and keeping it together in just a nick of time. It is that little nick of time that God seems to use to sharpen the pencil point of our lives like Frank Lloyd Wright’s pen knife. Is he sharpening your point right now?