Bethany Fields | Lifestyle Photographer | Amarillo, Texas

The birth of a new year leaves me reaching.   With the first month already written on the calendar in “things done and things accomplished,”  I look at this next month expectantly waiting to see how it will unfold.  I love the first cold months of the year.  With the cold comes reflection. Insight develops with the dry ground and naked trees. It’s almost as if my soul and spirit are crying out to be noticed in their true forms, without the “fluff” and pomp of all the clutter that goes on in springsummerfall.

I’ve been hibernating. Truly. I’ve had many texts, emails, calls asking “are you still blogging?”  ”Where are you?”  ”Is everything okay??”

And I can say that “yes, now, everything is wonderful.” 

I feel as if last year was a specific season….in all aspects of my life.  Not just my business (which is afterall, just that).  Even though my blog centers around that one aspect of my life, I have so very many things (as we all do) that pull.

And this pulling sometimes causes me to pause and say “hold on.”   I don’t want to be pulled.  I want to reach out and embrace willingly that which is truly important.

January is a time of refocusing.  Reprioritizing.  Remembering dreams.  Discovering new paths and new directions.  Decluttering not only my home and my spaces, but my soul, mind, body, and spirit.

Preparation for the new year.  A caterpillar enters and a butterfly emerges….something like that?

Matthew 11:28

“Come to me all who are weary and heavy-burdened, and I will give you rest.”

I’m holding this tight to me today as for some reason I’ve been feeling a bit fragile these days.  Like I’m holding everything up by strings and if I jostle them too much this way or that, the whole mess will get tangled and jumbled and broken.  Perhaps it’s the weather, perhaps it’s simply time passing a little too quickly for my liking.  Perhaps it’s the fact that time is forced upon us before it’s necessary (Christmas music in stores mid-November?) It must be some rule that by this time every year, I just want everything to stop.  To slow down.  I want to simmer with enjoyment every little thing.  I get tired of rushing and hurrying and doing and being.  Fall breaks upon us like crashing waves after a slow hot summer. And while it’s good to have things to do, places to be, goals to accomplish, sometimes it is all just too much.

It makes me feel fragile and dry..ready for a good quenching and a peaceful rest.