The truth is heavy.

I have to find some things.

Some words, some routines, some peace.  Some momentum and strength. Courage.  Some increased sense of self.

The truth hides under blankets and it is oh so heavy.  Some days I can't even pick up a plastic bag off the floor, much less haul the truth out of its depth.

I have perpetually just awakened from a long sleep and I am looking for myself among the objects I have gathered around me.  Am I in the crocheting, the Christmas tree, the running gear, the TV?  Am I on facebook or in the long-neglected guitar in my room?  The books that I hang onto but can barely read?  Am I in the candles or the paintings or the cookbooks in the kitchen?  Am I in my work as a teacher?

I am thinking but there is too much.

A few years ago, I woke up one morning to snow.  I hadn't snow danced.  I hadn't even expected it.  It was amazing, already several inches deep and still coming down.

It snowed all day.  Kym and Justin came down and Ty and I spent the day outside with them.  We made a snow woman and dressed her in a bikini.  We called her Snowanna.  We broke leaves off of the azalea to adorn her head.

At one point I stopped and looked out down the street and across the yard.  The snow was still falling and everything was so.beautiful.  And I told Kym, "Days like today make me feel like everything will always be ok."  It really did.  I remember that feeling, that sudden promise from the universe that somehow, if we could have a day like that, everything would be ok.

I don't know what made me think of that moment.  I guess needing to feel like everything is going to be ok. 

Earlier I was looking for the source of something I read in the past.  I couldn't find it, but what I did find was Joan Didion's "On Self Respect": "To have that sense of one's intrinsic worth which constitutes self-respect is potentially to have everything: the ability to discriminate, to love and to remain indifferent."

I need to go running in the dark--running towards the answers.  I know they aren't at the end, but along the way, and the truths are heavy and hard to hold on to.

UPDATE!
I finally found what I was looking for earlier.  It comes from a piece by Nancy Mairs called "On Being a Cripple."  In it she talks about her MS diagnosis, her life, and why she chooses the word "cripple" to identify herself.  For a while she was told she had a brain tumor before finally being diagnosed with MS.  She says, "Every day for the past nearly ten years, then, has been a kind of gift. I accept all gifts."  I had forgotten where that came from but I think it so often.  I accept all gifts.  The universe has sent me many gifts over the years and last few months--in the midst of a difficult time, and I am grateful for them all.  For comfort, for a text or an email, for a song suggestion or the time it takes to express appreciation for friendship and caring.  I accept all gifts.