One day, in the fall, as water and air cooled, at some precise temperature an ancient bell sounded in the turtle brain. A signal: Take a deep breath. Each creature slipped off her log and swam for the warmer muck bottom…She closed her eye and dug into the mud. She buried herself.

And then, pulled into her shell, encased in darkness, she settled into a deep stillness. Her heart slowed–and slowed–almost stopping. Her body temperature dropped–and stopped just short of freezing.

…

To survive a cold that would kill her or slow her so that predators would kill her, she slows herself beyond breath in a place where breath is not possible.

And waits. As ice locks in the marsh water and howling squalls batter its reeds and brush, beneath it all she waits It is her one work, and it is not easy. Oxygen depletion stresses every particle of her…So, though she is dissolving, every stressed particle of her stays focused on the silver bead of utter quietude.

It’s the radical simplicity that will save her. And deep within it, at the heart of her stillness, something she has no need to name, but something we might call trust; that one day, yes, the world will warm again, and with it, her life.

–All Creation Waits
Gayle Boss

I read this story to my kids tonight and ended in tears. I feel that darkness, that stillness. I feel myself withdrawing into quietude for safety, slowing everything down to be present to all that is right now. And waiting.

“It is [my] one work, and it is not easy.”

My soul cried when I read the final sentence. The days are long.  In these depths, the only hope I have is to trust that “one day… they world will warm again, and with it, [my] life.”