.....that we modern day Americans are a rather spoiled bunch.

Or maybe they do tell us we are spoiled. Maybe they tell us all the time. But as is typical of spoiled people (or nations) we just really don't believe it's true.

Personally I've never thought of myself as spoiled. Perhaps my parents or my brother or my husband would disagree. But even if they did and they admitted I was somewhat spoiled, they'd be hard pressed to say I was easily discontent.

I am very content. Oftentimes to a fault.

However, this winter has severely pushed even my limits. Endless days filled with gloomy clouds, brutal snows and frigid temperatures have worn thin my ability to cope. I feel lost in this limbo of needing to soldier through and yet wanting very much to just call it quits and hibernate until spring.

I am bored. I am numb. I am running out of ideas on how to entertain my energetic almost three year old daughter.

If I were to title this place in my life where I currently find myself I'd steal a line from Shakespeare (and John Steinbeck) and christen it 'The Winter Of Our Discontent.'

Truly nothing could be more accurate.

But over the course of the last few days, when a blizzard dumped a foot and a half of snow over the already snow covered Midwest and double digit, sub-zero temperatures have abounded and no one ventures out unless they HAVE to, I watched two very interesting shows on our local public television station. (Because, let's face it, what else is there to do?)

One documentary detailed the life of Spanish explorer Cabeza de Vaca; who, after being shipwrecked off the coast of Texas (before it was Texas) spent 7 years in either Native American captivity or in walking some 2000 miles across the entire country of Mexico. And the other documentary was about the fatally doomed Arctic Expedition of Adolphus Greely.

Both men dealt with conditions I could never, in even my most devastatingly horrible nightmares, conceive of.

Walking for two entire years?

Spending three winters stranded and lost somewhere off the coast of Greenland?

I can hardly take three months of winter; in my warm house, with it's warm bed and adequate supply of food and water and the electricity needed to run a computer and a T.V. and everything else.

How would I have survived if I had been with Greely's expedition? Forget the physical deprivations, what do you do all day, every day, trapped inside a crowded little tent? How do you not go completely insane?

Leaving behind the extreme harrows of exploration above the arctic circle how would I have survived a mere 100 years ago? Bitter, unforgiving winters are not new. No, the warm houses and electricity and running water we have to deal with them are. But more generations of people got by "the old fashioned" way than have got by in these, by comparison, rather unimpressive modern times. So in short, what's my problem?

I know, I know. I could delve off into musing about how much time I have on my hands. And it's true. If the well-being of my family depended on hauling firewood daily and getting up at five in the morning to light the stove so we didn't all freeze and continually chipping layers of ice off our collection of drinking water I'd have nothing left over at the end of the day to wonder if maybe there wasn't something a little more fulfilling I could be doing with myself.

But basically the problem as I see it is me. I'm spoiled. I want to do what I want to do, when I want to do it. Spend weeks on end trapped inside? Yeah, I'd rather not. So until I get my way (which, let's face it is never) I'm going to sulk and complain.

Pathetic.

There is a rhythm in nature, you see; an unalterable sequence. Winter follows fall. It's been this way from the beginning of time. And it's there for a reason. It reminds us that we are not omnipotent. We control nothing. Maybe that truly is a concept we in modern, advanced, technologically proficient America have a hard time grasping. Maybe it's a concept we fail to grasp at all.

Except in winter. When there is no short cut. When there is no lasting escape. When as we can do is surrender and realize to do so isn't the end. It's the beginning; of a life lived beyond the spoiled, selfish, truncated world of ourselves.

Let's face it, who among us would have created winter? But God did. So I, for one, am going to enjoy it.