And it isn't just our life we value - it's the lives of all the creation we care for. For example, my husband and I have backyard chickens, and even though they are cold hardy birds, I've spent the day checking their water, giving them additional food, putting up more insulation for their coop, and even making them oatmeal. The temps have dropped, and yet those little miracles are laying eggs like it's summer. Like all creatures, they are wired to choose life.
I was so preoccupied with the critters that I nearly forgot that it was Downton Abbey premiere night for series 4. A few friends braved the snow to sit and watch with me. (I finally calmed down and recognized that the chickens would be fine.) Once again, I became lost in the story of Lady Mary, a widow now facing either a grim future without her husband or a new promise of leadership of Downton.
In the midst of the blizzard and the show, I paused and saw my own life as a choice. Each day, really, is a choice -- to live or to die. We get up and engage ourselves, or we drift away, into despair and cold. When I was widowed suddenly over five years ago, I saw my life as two paths. One showed potential, bright lights, peace. It wouldn't be easy or immediate but it was life. The other was dark, twisted, leading to error. There were days that the choice seemed easy, days when the choice was less clear. Days when you have that simple choice: I will live or I will die.
On Downton Abbey, Mary's grandmother tells her, rather sternly, that she must choose death or life. There is no in between.
I was so preoccupied with the critters that I nearly forgot that it was Downton Abbey premiere night for series 4. A few friends braved the snow to sit and watch with me. (I finally calmed down and recognized that the chickens would be fine.) Once again, I became lost in the story of Lady Mary, a widow now facing either a grim future without her husband or a new promise of leadership of Downton.
In the midst of the blizzard and the show, I paused and saw my own life as a choice. Each day, really, is a choice -- to live or to die. We get up and engage ourselves, or we drift away, into despair and cold. When I was widowed suddenly over five years ago, I saw my life as two paths. One showed potential, bright lights, peace. It wouldn't be easy or immediate but it was life. The other was dark, twisted, leading to error. There were days that the choice seemed easy, days when the choice was less clear. Days when you have that simple choice: I will live or I will die.
On Downton Abbey, Mary's grandmother tells her, rather sternly, that she must choose death or life. There is no in between.
In winter, it is death we encounter. The cold would take us if it could, but we shovel ourselves out, we thaw the frozen water, we care for those we are responsible for. It would be easy to hibernate and wait for sleep to swallow us, but instinctively, we find ourselves rising in the cold and choosing life.
It is the miracle of a warm hen's egg in the middle of a sub zero day.
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