Today has been–stressful. I’ve had a rash on my thighs for a couple weeks now, and for whatever reason decided to officially start freaking out about it this afternoon. I’m just ready for it to be better. Well, technically it is better. I’m ready for it to be gone. Anyway, I tried getting into a dermatologist today, but everyone’s closed for the holidays. So instead of taking a deep breath and telling myself that I can wait until next week after my knee surgery, I told myself I have an incurable flesh-eating virus.

This was very upsetting for me to hear.

Distressed, I took a nap. When I woke up, I distracted myself by reading a book and playing with my nephews. And eating. My sister cooked dinner, and I ate two platefuls. Then I went through the physical therapy exercises I’ll be doing starting the day after surgery, just to get a hang of them. Ugh. I’m not looking forward to this. I mean, I AM looking forward to getting better, to walking, running, and dancing again. It’s just the damn slowness of the whole thing that’s got me down.

Tonight my sister and I started working on a thousand-piece puzzle. (So far we’ve finished the border.) This is something she, my brother-in-law, and I did last year while they were visiting for the holidays. At that time, I was two months into the grossest and longest sinus infection of my life. And just like we finished the puzzles we were working on, my infection eventually went away. Anyway, I overused the analogy back then, but obviously this is how life proceeds, piece by piece. Sooner or later things come together.

Tonight is the winter solstice, the shortest day and longest night of the year (in the northern hemisphere). Officially, it’s the start of winter, but it’s also the start of the solar year. I’ll explain. The sun always appears to rise in the east and set in the west. (I say appears because the sun isn’t actually moving; we are.) However, in the summer, it rises and sets in the northeast/northwest, and in the winter, in the southeast/southwest. (Incidentally, the opposite is true for the moon.) That is, from the summer solstice until the winter solstice, the sun tracks ever less overhead and ever more toward the southern horizon. This is a change that’s noticeable on a daily basis if you know how to measure it, and is something ancient people paid attention to.

Like at Stonehenge.

A lot of people think of the winter solstice as the point at which the sun is at its “lowest,” and therefore the point at which everything turns around and our days start getting longer. I believe this is technically true, but it’s important to note that when the sun reaches its lowest point, it appears to “stay there” for three days. That is, for three days, there’s no perceptible movement in terms of it moving toward the south or the north. This was a big deal to the ancients, since–not understanding modern astronomy–they believed that the sun had “died.” But then after three days, they’d see the sun “rise again” and begin its slow trek toward the north. (Incidentally, the word resurrection means “rise again.”) Anyway, this was cause for celebration, and as I understand it, is why we celebrate Christmas (the birth of the “son”) on December 25, since that’s three days after the 22nd, which is when the solstice typically is. This three-day thing is also why Jonah was three days in the belly of the whale and Christ was three days in the grave.

To me, the symbology is not lost. There are times in all our lives when things get worse and worse. Eventually we hit rock bottom. This is our darkest night. And if things turned around quickly, perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad. But a period of stillness appears to be required, a length of time spent in the grave. The grave–this is where you rest. This is where you give up hope. Not altogether, but of things going your way. This is where you surrender. This is where you do your best to have faith that your dark nights will grow shorter and your days will grow longer, that the whale will spit you up on dry land, that something bigger and stronger than you will roll away your personal gravestone and give you new life.