"Prosperity" © 2012   ~ watercolor by Carol E. Fairbanks

                                                                Winter Harvest

"In the midst of winter, I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer".

I first saw this quote by Albert Camus on a poster when I was on vacation with my Mom and Dad and three kids in the Smoky Mountains in Tennessee.  It was a very difficult time for me, as I was raising my three young children by myself and feeling incredibly alone, after my husband had left to pursue a relationship with another woman.  I had just completed an incredibly challenging year teaching at an inner city school, where the students not only dealt with issues of race, but also struggled with extreme poverty.  All of this had left me feeling exhausted, as if I had just climbed those mountains we had been admiring in our last few days of travel. 

So here I was looking at this poster.... feeling like I was in the most severe "winter" of my life.... and it was telling me that I had an "invincible summer" within me.  Of course, I bought the poster immediately without even looking at the price. I really needed some wisdom to remind me that there was more to me than this bone-chilling sadness I was feeling.

As the years have passed by, and I have taped up this poster in each new home of mine, I have become aware that the real blessing is not the "invincible summer........ rather it is the "winter" that has been my teacher.  The winters of my life have challenged me to find those inner resources and rise above my troubles, maturing and growing beyond my limited perception of self. Would I have grown and matured, as I have, if it were not for the opportunities to use and develop those inner resources?  Would I have even had the confidence to set aside my fears and move across the country by myself ? I think not. 

Those winters I have survived have shown me far more about who I am than any of my successes.  So the next time I am shivering in the cold with the harsh winter wind cutting me down to size, I will ask, "What have you come to teach me?"  It's in discovering the answer to that question that I will probably experience my "invincible summer".