My plants in outside pots are crushed by Houston’s icy weather, even though they were covered. The succulents look as if they were never fat and tender. Ivies are withered to nothing. I talk with a friend today and find out bids she’d been hoping for have been rejected. The icy economic weather is taking its toll, too. We can withstand so much, and then there’s a breaking point. Our faith cracks, and our hope. Fear or faith. Fear or love, we always choosing one or the other, say the psychologists. I’m going to carefully trim the dead parts off each and every one of my plants. It will be interesting to me to watch them make their comeback. I’ll be excited by the first little tender shows of green. I wish I could trim the hurt from my friend. I know she’ll green again. But does she? Someone said to me over the phone this week, this is a hard planet. Yes, and yes again. What do you do when the wind is not at your back, but pushing against your every step. It makes little blisters in the heart. At the beginning of the week, a group of us looked up an old blessing:
May the road rise to meet you,
May the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
The rains fall soft upon your fields.
And until we meet again,
May God hold you in the palm of his hand.
What do you do when it’s hard, when you’re in the valley, and the high mountains around cover the sunlight? When there is no rain on your fields? Our internal fields are so much more fragile than outside ones. How do you yourself hold the faith?
O, may the road rise to meet you………………..
Karleen Koen — writing life 
This morning I dug around where I planted potatoes, their plants lying flat and lifeless after the freeze. As I did so, I discovered new little shoots of growth just beneath the surface, showing their resilience. In my own life, I ended a recent dark period with a virtual yoga conference that allowed me to “catch my breath” and return to the source of my inner peace. Now I have little shoots of new growth in my psyche, including a juicy idea for a yoga recording that I plan to share for free–I’ve already started to write the script. I love how the green of spring and new hope always returns.
Karleen, what a tender post. It went straight to my heart as I struggle to finish a project I have been working on for several years. Assailed by every doubt immaginable, fear and self doubt seem to have taken over. Ice outside and ice inside, too. As I find more often true, now, I turn to fellow writers for a friendly voice. Today, your voice reminded me to clear away the frozen debris and find a shoot of green. Thank you.