I have reached a gray season.

Not in terms of this January morning, with its oyster sky and neutral-colored doves settling into the birdbath under the naked crape myrtle as I write. Not the frenzied darksilver squirrels darting about with their elegant question-mark tails. Nor the grass, which isn’t gray, just seemingly unable to decide if it wants to be brown or green, dead or alive.

Gray, but not the concrete driveway or my husband’s secondhand silver car…replacing the trusty car we had for almost fifteen years, totaled at summer’s end. A driver ran a stop sign at the crossroads nearby. My husband was driving our old car. He wasn’t injured. He is a survivor of so many things that it would take a book to tell it all.

Survival. A word worthy of contemplation. But it’s not the word I have in mind this morning, nor is the word gray, really. I am just describing what I see through my own window. The way things are in this moment. My now.

When I say I have reached a gray season, I mean an in-between point, like when the holidays and their glittering festivities are over (although my Christmas tree is still up; my husband likes the lights on these long winter evenings). A point when another year has gone and a new one is unfolding with who knows what hidden in its folds for us all. A taking-stock season. A reevaluation of priorities through the lens of what I am able—and not able—to do now. Not what I will do tomorrow, next week, this summer…or in the indeterminate days or years of life remaining to me, when youth is gone and aging gets to write the rest of the story.

People tell me I do not age. My body tells me otherwise. Minor aches and pains are the telltale signs of Time. I am incrementally slower than I used to be. More deliberate and careful. Not to mention presently shaking off mild bronchitis. I have a friend who stayed physically active and kept working hard because, in her words, “I refuse to get old.” But she did, she is, and dementia has taken control. So much for living nearly a century. I have lived well over half of one and feel the weight of it. Paradoxically, people ask when I plan to retire. Fun question. Most retirees I know are still working. Staying alive is expensive.

So I come to a plateau of asking: What is truly worth my time, my energy, my money? What is necessary? What is not? What is wise? A shedding-place, you might say. Born of a desire to get rid of material things I do not need as well as thoughts, perspectives, ideas, failures, vanities, even (shocking my own self with this) memories and losses that I am tired of carrying.

If I strip all this away (envisioning long strips of bark peeling off the crape myrtle as it grows), what do I find?

My spirit, ageless and weightless, eternally longing for God who breathed it in the first place. The Author of everything I ever truly loved in my whole life’s journey, the Giver of every good and perfect gift, miraculously drawing me along. God who sustained me to this point. God who will see me through the rest of the journey, ever how weary and unable I become. God whose sovereignty is absolute, even when I cannot see it or sense it.

As I write—not making this up, honest—the sun pierces the grayness outside my window.

Let me reveal the word I had in mind when I began this post.

Amen.

Technically it means so be it or truly. It is a word signifying acceptance.

It just so happens to be the word on a silver necklace one of my sons gave me for Christmas.

It comes at a time when day-to-day plans take a backseat to my husband’s ongoing health issues and my own limitations. A letting go, to keep on going. A not quite here-nor-there-time. A time of finding freedom within the very constraints of Time. I’ve even decided—again surprising myself—to let my gray hair grow out because I am tired of fighting the inevitable.

So, yes, literally a gray season, in so many ways.

My now. I am learning to embrace it.

Amen.

with thanks to Margaret Simon for kicking off the 2026 Spiritual Journey gatherings on the first Thursday of each month, and for this new logo, which I love. I am posting two days late, on Saturday, as it took me awhile to get to this. So be it (Amen).