Snow!

Snow is a great thing, sometimes (at least once in a while!). It is so... white. It makes things look so new and clean. A fresh blanket of white covering up all the spots that are a mess. It's a great thing. It's invigorating. It refreshes. But, it eventually melts away.

The sad part about the first snow of the year is that it melts. I always hated snow when I had to work in it, but now that I'm not required to be out in it all day, I find it quite nice. Although the melting part is what has caught my view today. As the snow melts away, all the things it hid come back. The spots where things were dead or where they shouldn't be (like the animal poo in the flower beds...) come back. I hate that. The whole image put me in mind of my own soul. Snow may temporarily cover the spots, but they come back. My problem is more that I add spots to my soul when it's clean and then they turn back into the old ones that were covered. It's rather irritating. Just like the melting snow on the grass, my soul goes from clean to covered in less than a minute. Why?

I suppose I could blame the Fall of man, environment, stress, or my children but that would be a lie. The fault lies solely with me, my issues and struggles. They keep coming back because I am not perfect. I could make that an excuse, "I'm not perfect and won't be, so I shouldn't be held up to those standards." But, that's just an easy way to attempt to shed the blame for my own foibles. I'm really good at that, too. I can shed and shift blame with the absolute best of them. In fact, I do so much blame shifting that it happens without thinking about it. It kinda scares me: I can do something so utterly stupid and still try and find blame in someone else, not myself.

But, today I'm going to say it: it's me. I may want to let someone else bear the blame, but it's me. I am the one who is at fault. I am the one who screwed up. Just like launching the leftover cheesecake across the roof of our van on Thursday (a very tragic waste, as I hadn't tried the other one and only had a partial piece of the first), I can't try to allow someone else to take the fall (and who would believe me anyway?). It's me. It's me...

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