Janvier Hurts

Janvier hurts. While I spend the whole day giggling with my 8 month old or if we’re not giggling he’s being clever or cuddly, January hurts. 

For little things: it’s post holidays, post all the parties, what do we cook now that we don’t cook Christmas food. It’s the air stings my face when I go outside and the snowy fields don’t hold the magic of angels singing I could easily imagine 2 weeks ago. It’s day 5 of fog, and, yes, the heavy layer of frost on everything is beautiful, but give me clear skies already. It’s unexciting planning meetings for all the winter responsibilities we could do without -crafts with the kids and Bible study for the whole congregation.

It’s bigger things. It’s Sissy going back to BC when we all are so used to her being here. She says families are meant to spread out, but we kind of disagree. It’s all the brothers drama all the time that we want to avoid, but also spectate on because it keeps life interesting.

There’s scary things. The man on drugs who really could’ve frozen in his vehicle just down the road from our house but amazingly didn’t. It’s Gun shots fired in the night near where we were winching a car out of the ditch at Keeseekoose, the popo coming to find out if we’d seen the “guy with the gun, wearing a plaid jacket.”  Although he must’ve been nearby, we didn’t see him. 24 hours later we’re still saying dramatically to each other “what if.” And then 48 hours later I finally think to think, “what hurt made this human want to hurt other humans to this extent?”

There’s so many hard things happening around us, more than to us right at this minute. There’s hurting people, hurting children. There’s so much hurt this Janvier, every Janvier, every month, every day, every year.