We are embracing a snow day today. Not because the commute from our bedrooms to the kitchen (where we do our school work) is treacherous, but because it has been a long winter and I, in my full and busy life, am breaking.

Imperceptible splinters, fine fault lines along my heart, that spread like spiderwebs bearing the weight that accumulate when you are ever taking things on, but never laying things down.

We are embracing a snow day, because I want to linger here, coffee in hand, eyes to the windowpane, as the trees behind my house fill like a Robert Frost poem. Because it’s February and we all just need to sit and stare up at the magnificent white sky, for no reason at all.

On any other day, we run. We clutter. We spill. We spin and toil.

We empty ourselves. We schedule ourselves. We commit ourselves, our hours, our lives, until we’re angry at the weather, grouchy at the road conditions, grumbling at life and nature just being what they have always been – every changing, fleeting, not ours to control.

And so this morning, this afternoon, this day of life, coming to a standstill as the earth disappears again beneath the perfect whiteness, I choose to lean into, not struggle against, that which I cannot control.

While doing so, I read this article, Six Reasons to Embrace Procrastination, which told me that this day of putting things off, of reflecting (rather than fridge cleaning or laundry folding) of making snow ice cream, (rather than doing pages of copy work or math problems,) is actually good.

“…procrastination is really the art of managing delay, and it can lead to greater success and happiness.”

Well, I can certainly lift my mug and say a pajama-clad at two in the afternoon, cheers! to that.

And truly, what a great skill to have. Not procrastination to the point of defeat or failure, but to posses the skill and the art of delay. To deftly manage the delays that you can control, and to have the patience and grace to accept those that you can’t.

It has been a long, slow, winding winter.

But, like all things, like these calendar days filled beyond capacity, these chore lists, and even this very peaceful afternoon of procrastination, this winter will come to an end, whether I rage against it, fighting and whining with each inch that the next storm brings – or if I simply sit and patiently allow it to bless me in quiet, snow-spoken ways.

Either way.

It will end.

And so, today, we are embracing a snow day.