How I Found Strength for the New Year

“You've got to jump off cliffs all the time
and build your wings on the way down.”

― Annie Dillard



I can feel the change. Like a breath taken in and not released. I had to read myself to sleep last night. I turned on my little lamp and opened The Writer’s Journey and passed my eyes over the words until the tension in my stomach eased and night pulled me into slumber.

And I mused, “Ah. This is why the other students leave campus. To escape this feeling as long as possible.” I’m not sorry I stayed. I did leave it all behind me for several weeks, but now the spring semester presses upon me with urgency and I can no longer delay the impression.

It is early morning. The campus sits like a moist bowl under umber clouds. Rain is coming. The air smells of rain and somehow of books, too. Over the holidays, all was stillness and shuttered windows. This week, cars begin moving at 5:30. Utility vehicles shuffle goods and people. It brings to mind a board game. On which spaces are you landing today? The cafeteria? Student Center? No, not the library, not yet.

Today I shall land on the space tagged “office” to discuss my schedule with my boss. I will wear brown and robin egg blue. Because it reminds me of an early spring nest. Brown twigs and blue eggs. Yes! I am a little bird making a nest. I know it’s silly, but the idea comforts me and adds a playfulness that infuses me with resiliency.

It’s one of the things I need to remember this year, to be like a child, to remember wonder.

On my weekend walks, I saw for the first time how many nests are sitting in bare trees, left behind during winter. They are small, brown like the trees, and you would not see them unless you searched. Every tree seems to have at least one. I know because I looked. How can a bird build such a thing with only a beak and sticks?

I pull away from my musings to make coffee. Is there another smell in the world which so richly expresses brown? Perhaps the smell of rain hitting earth. I open a window. Fresh air spills into the room. I can hear the breathing of my family. Soon the light will rise in the east, but at this moment I am still tucked into the dark folds of early morning. I pour coffee into a white cup and add milk in a slow stream. Then I close my eyes like a girl and sniff. Yes, it is the essence of brown.

I will not linger much longer. The day will be full. But at this moment, I am filling the space with another kind of fullness.

Last week, I had a planning retreat where I thought about my life. I pondered, clarified, simplified. The result? My expectations have been pared back to the essentials. I am trim, lean in my soul.  I can feel the sureness of it, the fit that seems just right. I feel it especially this morning: I am ready to run.

But before I do, I pause to put a bit of wonder in my pocket. For strength.

How do you find strength for your soul?