Unbridled Thoughts in the Shortest Month

A friend wrote this morning that she is really ready for February to be over. I understand the sentiment. For a few years, February brought nothing but scary sadness to our home. One year, we endured my dad's heart surgery. The next we experienced the loss of our baby and then dad's emergency brain surgery squeezed in a week later. I became so engulfed in the threat of February that last year I worried all the way over the Atlantic and back when I attended a workshop in Oxford, England. Luckily, February 2012 passed without negative incident in our lives. And this February has brought a hospital-free visit with dad, fun memories abroad and good times with friends in the mountains at home. Yes, it seems our personal February spell has been broken.

It isn't just our family that has trepidations about February. Songs of February never really seem to carry an upbeat tune, though they can be beautiful in their own right (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yy-v-UgNhuI). Poems of February often involve darkness, solitude and sometimes death, but some share thoughts of warmth and love inside the cozy, winter home.

There are things to get excited about in February. After all, an entire day in the middle of the month is dedicated to love. It is also a great time to hear celebrations of our African American history. For me, the best thing about February is that it is short and that when it ends March will come marching in to save the day (hey, maybe that's why they call it that). Still, the month lives on and brings with it the cold of winter and the stillness that can lead to uncertain and vulnerable thoughts.

With no news since the good news of January to share in our adoption group, the restless thoughts begin. We're supporting each other through some wanderings of the mind that lead to glass-half-empty kind of days. I've said it before, and I promise to beat it into you again, the adoption journey is not for the weak in heart.

I have a daily calendar with sayings about the life of a gardener. One of the recent quotes came to mind as emails were flying between our group this week.

"Your mind is a garden. Your thoughts are the seeds.
The harvest can be either flowers or weeds." ~ Unknown

Now, there are a lot of other quotes in that calendar about how we have to give weeds respect for boldly growing wherever they want to and not being forced into tidy rows. The same could probably be true for our negative thoughts through The Wait. They have the tenacity to persist in the absence of a focus on positivity.

For those of you waiting for the march of spring to begin, hang on, there is just one more week until we're through with February and can welcome the month of the spring equinox. To give you some inspiration to dream of brighter thoughts to come, I offer you this from our garden of springs past...

Look for these little guys first...

...with these lovely ladies not far behind.

"The flowers of late winter and early spring occupy places in our hearts well out of proportion to their size." ~ Gertrude S. Wister

I'll choose to focus on that one love-soaked day in February and fill up my heart with the brightness and hope of what is to come.