Winter Blues

I've never liked January. After the spirit, warmth & love of the holidays, January becomes a time for sobering up. While snow in December is magical, snow in January is just cold. Christmas lights are turned off. Decorations put away. Life slowly returns to normal.

This year, I find myself even more reflective & somber than usual. Maybe it's just specific events of the last few days that have affected me so much.

- Late last night, I stood in below freezing temperatures on the porch of a comfortable suburban home telling a mother that DCFS is trying to take custody of her troubled 11 year old daughter. Her screams and sobs are still echoing in my head.
- A Utah Deputy Sheriff was killed two nights ago, and while her killers were apprehended just a few minutes ago, no justice served on them will return a wife and mother to her husband and two children. She paid the ultimate price for the members of the community she served.
- Finally, I am thinking today of how two years ago today, in an act of supreme selfishness, a cousin shot and killed his wife in a church parking lot on her 30th birthday, making orphans of their two young boys & draping a dark cloud over his entire family for years to come. We didn't see Kristy every day, but we never went more than a couple of weeks without her and the boys dropping by to say hi & for the boys to play with my kids for a few minutes. Later today I'll take some flowers over to her grave, just like last year.

I guess that I am seeing the worst of things right now. My mood seems to match the grim smoggy sky and dirty piles of snow packed in to corners of parking lots.

I really can't wait for the sunshine of spring to arrive.