Still Winter

 Yes, I've been MIA from the blog for almost two months.

It's been a rough two months.  Well, not 2020 rough.  But still...

January is always hard.  My depression generally swoops in for the post-holiday, lack of sunlight, cold weather mood morass.  This year wasn't unusually bad for me in that department, except that with some of the stuff in the family I found it hard to cope.  Things kind of peaked in February with health scares of both the mental and physical variety among the kids.  I wish I could give you details but I can't, really.  The kids are older, and it would be a horrible invasion of their privacy when I know they don't want me publicly talking about it.  Throw in a car accident-- even if not a major one with no injuries-- that meant I had to go back to my old driving schedule to get everyone to school-- and it's been a mountain of a month weighing on my shoulders.

I'm so tired. My brain and creativity are shot, and after such an amazing fall of writing success, I'm stuck trying to finish Sheralie novel #6.  I'm at 90k words but unable at this point to just finish it. *sigh* It's like my brain has no extra space for the writing, but I need the writing because it is one of the few productive things that makes me feel better. The best I could do was play around trying to make cover art using Midjourney-- which turned out to be quite a bit of fun (even though getting an AI to produce what I want is sometimes a hilarious experiment and sometimes downright annoying).  Here's one of the pictures I created for the Sheralie series that turned out more or less like I wanted:

Anyway. There are no quick answers or resolutions to the challenges facing our family, but I'm trying to turn to Christ for strength and just keep swimming.  No one ever said being a parent would be easy, I know that.  I read a quote that one of my friends posted on facebook that basically said it's ok if we are facing the thorns and the hungry wolf dressed up as grandma and the dragons...because we know the ending, and it's all going to be all right.  If I could really get that to stick in my heart-- I know the ending, and it's happily ever after-- then maybe swimming through open water trying to keep my kids afloat with no end in sight wouldn't be so frightening.  I am grateful that I am not doing it alone.  Of course I have Terence-- it's his battle as much as mine-- and we are both depending on God to get us through everything.

But a quick glimpse of the future might be a relief. Just so I know for sure it all turns out OK in the end.