I am not an evergreen

All throughout my yard, evergreens are planted next to flowering shrubs or trees that lose their leaves and stand bare through the winter months.   While the evergreens have the same, stately fullness of needle or leaf, same depth of the color green, the flowering bushes and trees look naked, fruitless.

I love peering out to my yard in the dead of winter, amidst its cold, sometimes gray, low cloud hanging days to see streaks of green, round orbs of color.
Something lives!
Something thrives when all else appears lifeless.
I love these evergreens because they are ever green.

I am not an evergreen.

Like my flowering bushes and trees, I languish during the winter. The cold, the lack of sunshine, illnesses that relentlessly creep all converges at once. It wears me down physically and wears on me spiritually.

I have long despised my frailty. I have wondered why I am so easily undone. I've analyzed and evaluated how to grow more stout,  more steady, more stately – poised – like some of my evergreen friends.

Without fail, I fail. I fall prey to external circumstances that weaken my resolve, steal my smile, and drain my liveliness.

I am learning to wait. I am learning to live fruitless and bare. I'm learning to not feel shame in my nakedness and nothing-to-offer seasons. These are the seasons of simply standing still, staying rooted, bearing the cold wind.

Fruitfulness and color will come.
For me, it's not the season.
It's my winter, and I'm not an evergreen