To whom it may concern,

The days are getting shorter. The sun sets much earlier, now. The breeze has gotten cooler – thank goodness, as my body was not built to thrive in the heat.

Every year for many years now, in the winter season, I have found myself growing tired.

I have such a beautiful life. At the expense of my old life (the life of a child who lived at home), I am building something new (the life of a grown up). There are a lot of things about this life that I would not trade for anything.

Winters have never been easy, and I can feel that winter is on its way. I find myself struggling, once again, against the tiredness. I am chronically a little discouraged, unsure, anxious. These are things through which I have persevered for a long time.

Nobody makes it out of childhood unscathed – even if the childhood itself wasn’t necessarily a bad one.

There are seasons where joy is easy and seasons where sometimes it is not.

I am secretly a little afraid that a bad season of struggling through these things with which I struggle is eventually going to cost me the good things about my life that I treasure very much.

What if this life I am building is too good to be true? What if a bad season ruins everything I have so carefully tried to build?

Bad weather is part of surviving.

Here is a prayer that the next season where joy isn’t easy will be kind to me and to this life that I am building.

Batten down the hatches. There is such a thing as a hurricane season.

I have sailed through bad storms before.