Liberated

A Friday Haiku

Scenes from Winter Storm Mara, 1/31/23-2/3/23, Dallas, TX

Winter storm Mara came through our part of North Texas this past week. On Monday and Tuesday, it dumped about half an inch of sleet on us. On Wednesday night, though, we got frozen rain, so we woke up yesterday morning to a quarter inch of ice on every surface. Live oak and magnolia limbs sagged beneath the extra weight. Walking the dog felt like a death-defying act.

Central Texas got hit harder than North Texas did. The ice there snapped many tree limbs, took out power lines, and felled quite a few trees that still hadn’t recovered from the past summer’s drought.

Temperatures in Dallas hovered between 32-34 degrees Fahrenheit all day yesterday, which allowed for a good amount of melting—not enough to liberate the trees but enough to make some of the roads drivable for a few hours in the afternoon and evening. This morning—to our delight—the sky finally cleared up and gave the sun unfettered access to the earth. One of the first things I saw when I looked out the window was a steady cascade of leaf-shaped icicles falling to the ground from our live oak. As I type this, those sagging limbs have returned to their previously upright position.

These images all made me think about the nature of sorrow—the way it weighs us down and, if we are still nursing wounds from a previous season, the way it can maim us further. At the same time, they made me think of the nature of God’s power—the way it can melt away sorrow and mysteriously reduce even the long, dark seasons of our soul to a distant memory.

Anyway, by way of long introduction, here’s a haiku (inherently short) I wrote to (hopefully) brighten your day.

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Liberated now

From what weighed me down before

Melted by the sun

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