January is in full swing and that means one thing. I feel I am coming down with the winter blahs. I know the symptoms well. No pep in my step, too many excuses to forego the salad for a big dish of macaroni and cheese and just an overall feeling of nothing going right. What exactly is the “right” I am talking about? Good question. Not sure. But that’s what happens when January is in full swing. Nothing seems “right.”

Yesterday I went for a walk on the farm in hopes of finding that “right.”  It was an aimless walk, one in which I couldn’t even feel the frozen ground beneath my feet. I didn’t even pay attention to the pockets of ice that were hidden beneath the leaves, leaves now revealed that the snow was gone. Sadly, the winter wonderland all around me had been replaced by shades of brown. I just wasn’t ready for what locals call the fifth season—mud season.

As I walked the stresses of my day joined me. They were not very good walking companions as they insisted on babbling, reminding me I was wasting my time on this walk. Get back to work. Get back to all the things you need to do. I finally gave and decided to head back to work. That’s when it happened. A patch of ice underneath the leaves sent me slipping and sliding. I couldn’t stay vertical any longer. Bang. Down I went. The fall was enough to get the tears flowing. No, I wasn’t hurt. I was just tired. I didn’t bother getting back up off the ground. Rather I allowed myself to remain crumbled on the ground…to sit, to cry, to just be. And it felt good.

I am not sure how long I stayed on the frozen ground with my tears, but sometime during what would have looked like a sad scene to a passerby something beautiful happened. My heart began to feel lighter. The babbling voices of my stresses began to silence themselves. I was no longer aimless. I knew exactly what the “right” was I wanted. I was getting “right” with God. I could feel the frozen ground beneath me and as my hand touched the brown leaves, I realized that hidden patch of ice was a blessing.

Richard Rohr once wrote that in the spiritual life we do not find something until we first lose it, ignore it and miss it. It is only in the search, in the falling, in the failing, do we realize how limited our plans are and how limitless God is. It is in those moments of defeat do we then truly see where our true victories await. In Christ alone.

It took a hard fall for me to feel again. It took stumbling to find my way back to God. It took falling first to be lifted back up.

May today you find the beauty in the stumbling and falling. May you know that with God finding ourselves on the ground is the exciting start to being lifted high.

The beauty of the path we walk on often can be found when we stumble and fall on that path. A scene from my early morning walk on the rail trail behind The Old Stone Well Farm.