Messy Days

While we were feeding the horses this morning, half-an-hour before the sun came up, we could see water beading on the bottom of the round metal rails of the horse pen. Hanging there in big drops that would eventually make their way down to the ground. An hour earlier, there would have been a thin layer of frozen fog crystalled over the galvanized frames but the air is already warming on this first Tuesday of 2026.

While mucking the dry lot, we could see the slickening surface of the lightly frozen cusp of dirt. It’ll get a lot worse in this day’s thaw. Between warmer air and a bright sun’s glare, things will change.

By time for the evening feeding, the paddock will be treacherous for walking—a sloppy mush over the still-frozen crust beneath the surface. We’ll wear our rubber boots, do our dookie-duty, and then use the garden hose to clean the mess off our boots. It’s just part of the arrangement in hosting horses on a tiny place in northeastern Kansas in January.

Along with beautiful sunrises, spectacular sunsets, days of fog, a full moon rising beyond the spruce and maples, and temperatures varying from single digits to the sixties. Rain or snow or miles of low fog and cloudless days or at least nothing but a few high strands of clouds barely more than wisps of white in a boundless blue sky. Probably at least one winter storm plus the one that already almost came.

There’ll be deaths and dooms and not nearly enough room for all that needs to get done and that right soon. There’ll be laughs and tears and regrets from years long past and worries that’ll never happen. The loss of friends and a never-ending cycle of nonsense in high places and cruelty in low ones. Heros and villains and everyday people. Grandkids and neighbors and best buds and BFF’s and first steps and fresh welts from slipping on ice. Deep bruises and a broken bone or two.

And in every moment of every day, opportunities to be light or darkness. To share the warmth and light of love or silently spread the cancer of indifference. To brighten a room by walking in—or by walking out.

No matter what we have to go through, we have a choice about how we handle it. Maybe we do sometimes have to wade through the muck but we don’t have to carry the stink with us everywhere we go.