This winter was truly the winter of our discontent. Almost two years ago we moved to Chicago or at least the near-by suburbs. It was a move made for all the right reasons. The job change was just what I was looking for, a chance to allow my faith to influence my work and vice versa. It was also a great opportunity to be closer to my daughter and her wonderful family...and especially a little two year old boy with a big smile and a twinkle in his eye. All was wonderful. We found a new home that we truly love, we made friends, found a great church home and perhaps the best part we started a new tradition of Sunday dinners as a family...an extended family.

This winter, however, brought much change. It was a somewhat harsh winter. The natives say it was the worst winter in more than thirty years. We had snow of some form on the ground from before Christmas all the way to the week before Easter. It was not the pristine white fluffy snow that one loves to see falling on Christmas Eve. This was the dirty, icy, slushy piles of frozen debris that never seems to go away. The week before Thanksgiving our temperatures dropped below 60 and never got above that mark until the second week of April. Along the way we had temps below zero on several occasions and even as much as 20 below with the wind chill factored in.

But it wasn't just the weather that turned bad. The job that I had so loved when I started began to take a toll. Everything I had been told about the guy I was working for turned out to be a sugar coated story about him. It became clear that we had drastically different views on leadership and management and the value of the people we were leading. After several challenging disagreements it became clear that the differences were more than one could reasonably overcome. It became clear that retirement was the best option. Don't get me wrong, I love it. I am spending more time with that twinkly eyed little boy and thoroughly enjoying every minute. I took a vacation, the first real vacation in many years, more years than I can remember. We spent time with friends sitting on the beach, sipping margaritas and beer and watching some of God's most beautiful sunsets. Retirement is definitely agreeing with me...but, it took a real struggle to get me to go there.

On the same day I retired my daughter told us that her husband was considering a position with a tech company on the west coast. Now what? We moved here to be close to them and our now two grandsons and they were leaving. We have only been in the house a short while so we will need a miracle to get our money out of it given all the improvements we have made. We will have to pack up again, we still have some boxes in the basement and attic that have not been unpacked...and it starts all over again.

Then I remembered, late one night or more likely early one morning, that this winter was brutal. We moved to be close to family and that the closeness was what really mattered. I remembered that the move to Chicago was not necessarily our first choice and we had actually looked at the same city that the family is now moving to when we considered this move. I remembered that I was now free from a job and able to live anywhere I wanted. Everything I was worried about was not really an issue.

Sure the winter had brought several major changes. It brought career ends, career changes, bitter cold weather. But it had also brought a new grandson with a smile to melt your heart, it brought a new granddaughter with a face to light up a room, it brought the freedom to, for the first time, move to wherever we wanted, it brought a family closer together with meals and conversations and babysitting days and breakfasts with my grandson and excursions to the hardware store. This winter did not go like any other...but perhaps it came and went just like it was suppose to.

So now we are looking at houses on online real estate sites and "shopping" for that new place to call home. We are anxiously waiting to find out where the extended family ends up so that we can be close enough for Sunday dinner and babysitting, but not so close as to get in the way. Something big enough to accommodate out of town visitors but small enough to allow us to travel and enjoy some of the sights we have been wanting to see. Somehow the winter that was so dark is giving way to a spring that is full of hope.

For now I will just continue looking for fun, cross over that 59th Street Bridge and feel as groovy as I can. Life is looking up from this vantage point.