Blogging Challenge: Revive/Resurrection

I love that I live in an area where it gets bloody hot in the summer and frigidly cold in the winter. I truly enjoy each and every season. I don't look at the autumn shades of red, orange, and brown and wish they were the first green and yellow blossoms of spring. I like to take a walk in the icy snow of winter as much as I like to take a swim in the cool ocean during the heat of summer, and when I head out either into the first snow of the season or into the ocean I haven't visited since the summer before, I inwardly (and rather giddily, I might add) think to myself, "Geronimo!"

Right now my jonquils are in bloom, and bless their delicate petals, temperatures have been at or below freezing this week. But still, every day they stand steadfast and tall, reaching for the light. I feel like those jonquils. Last year I turned forty, and while I do NOT consider myself "old," I acknowledge that I've entered a different season of my life. I've been taking stock of all the Goods and Bads and Uglies I've experienced. For a long time -- years, even -- it was easier (so I thought) to hang on to all the bad things. I felt I had more control over that. It was like, yeah, I'm down and sad and depressed, but at least I know what I'm going to get and how I'm going to feel each day. I found a sick form of contentment in choosing to let my depression, self loathing, and lack of confidence lie underneath my civil, and at times cheerful, façade. For if I tried to seek the good in life, I might not reach it, thus opening myself to rejection and disappointment. That kind of outlook can go on only for so long. Either you stay that way and sink, or you change your attitude and climb out. So like those persevering jonquils that lie under the cold, damp earth, I came to a place in my heart, mind, and spirit where I had to brave the cold frost and choose to rise up and stand steadfast and tall, and reach for the light. Now I better appreciate all the good things from my past, and I welcome and even seek out all the good things that surely are to come. There will be bad occasionally mixed in with the good. And that's OK. Hopefully I will take the good things gracefully and the bad things in stride, and somehow give both the respect they need, for such is life. Geronimo...