Small, Flickering Flames on Matchsticks

Something lighter. Something simple, like a slow morning with a hot cup of coffee.

That’s what I wanted to write about this week. Something with the bright feel of green budding trees, deep blue skies, and warm sunshine. 

But it’s gloomy and cloudy today. And we are supposed to get snow overnight into tomorrow. It probably won’t stick, and it’s not like it’s surprising. We always get late April snow in the midwest. Spring is always this same weather rollercoaster ride. 

I could complain, I just don’t know which part of it I want to complain about. I don’t know if I’m more sick of the grey gloom or being cold. So maybe, I just need to deal with it. Maybe I need to be quiet and do my best to enjoy the ups, downs, and loop-de-loops of this season.

Just because you want things to be bright, light, and breezy doesn’t mean they will be. And just because it’s grey and cold doesn’t mean that you have to be gloomy. Like most things, the weather is beyond the scope of what we can control.

What we do get to control is how we face it. On the most beautiful of days, you can just as easily find gloom as you can warm sunshine. And maybe it’s a bit harder on a grey day, but you can find brightness if you are willing to look for it.

One of my favorite ideas, written and talked about in many places including Harry Potter, is that there is light and dark in all of us. What matters is how we choose to use what we have.

I believe that it’s much easier to recognize the light things when you’ve also seen darkness. It’s our hardest times that define us just as much as anything else. It’s in darkness that you look for those small, flickering flames on matchsticks.

We all have a hardest experience we’ve ever survived. And for me, the reason I survived mine was those burning matches other people held up for me to see in my darkness. I didn’t keep getting out of bed every day for me. I kept getting up because I knew that other people cared enough to keep holding up those tiny lights so I could see they were still there.

That’s what spring does for us. Spring helps guide us from a darker, colder season into one that is bright and sunny. Spring provides just enough of those warm, glowing matches so that we keep holding on until the campfire stays lit.

But once we get to our seat at the campfire of summer, we are so good at pointing out the negative. We can’t help saying it’s too hot and complaining about the smoke getting in our eyes. Because we expected the warm, bright days of a new season to be perfect. And they aren’t, so we focus on all the ways they could be better.

Light and darkness are a package deal. They are like those attached at the hip best friends who always go everywhere together. And why shouldn’t they be best friends? They might fight all the time for our attention, but they also compliment each other quite well. It’s in their balance and contrast, and the way they mix themselves together that life happens.

There will always be smoke when there is a campfire burning. Life works more naturally when you acknowledge that both the smoke and the heat exist. But you get to choose what you’ll focus on. You get to decide if you feel the warmth of the flames or if you can’t get past the smoke in your eyes.