A great wind is blowing, and that gives you either imagination or a headache.        –Catherine the Great

March weather, already, has been erratic with record high and below zero temperatures, with balmy sunshine and rain, hail, and snow, and with calm quietness and fierce, unrelenting winds.  The crash of warm and cold fronts caused tornadoes that touched down just miles from where we lived in Missouri during the first half of our wedded life.  The winds tore the shingles off the roof of First United Methodist Church in Odessa where we used to attend.  It seemed like the whole Midwest felt the fury of Mother Nature before it blew off to the East in a devil-may-care huff.

The up and down temperatures had the sap running in the maple trees with sapsicles forming on the frigid days.

On the warm days, sap dripped from the branches, and a little red squirrel lapped up the sweet goodness as he grasped onto the underside.

Then he would run over to the bird feeder and chow down on black oil sunflower seeds.  I thought he must be the best-fed squirrel in the land.

South winds blew in balmy warm weather last Sunday and Monday with highs near 60 degrees.  A storm approached from the west on Monday afternoon bringing rain, hail, and then a quiet calmness.

Late that evening we suddenly heard the wind crashing through the trees, this time from the WNW.  By morning we had snow.

The great wind blew like a madman for two nights and two days.  The barometer was close to the lowest I had ever recorded.  Tree branches thudded on the roof and tumbled to the ground.  It was unnerving in its demeanor and relentlessness—‘an ill wind that blows no good.’  It gave me a headache and frazzled my nerves.

The relentless wind made me feel like other times in my life when I had felt beat up just for existing.  Lyme disease made me feel that way.  The end years of my graduate school career made me feel that way.  I was just trying to do the best that I could, taking punches that had no sense of fair play, and ending up just barely keeping my head above water.  Imagination is defined as the ability to face and resolve difficulties.  We form mental images, most often without conscious knowing, of our life without the difficulty.  We problem-solve, we question, we wrestle with whatever madman is trying to take over our life, and we move in a different direction.  We are more resourceful than we know.  I think the headache has to come first.  Those thudding branches and frazzled nerves prime our imaginations in order for us to see our way to a different, better way.  The way to sweet Goodness.