From The Innkeepers

New Year? Yes Please.
On Surrendering to Powerlessness

Although this blog is being published on January first, let me clear up any expectations. This entry will not be about fresh starts, new beginnings, or inspiring resolutions. Last month, the blog was cheerfully titled “Let it Snow!” The November me was able to find peace and delight in the novelty of “up north” winter weather. The December me? Not so much. Instead, this month’s blog could easily be titled, “Please, God, Make It Stop.”

After our Thanksgiving snow dump of nine inches, winter decided it was here to stay at the Inn. Most of December was nonstop cold, snow, and wind, broken only by a brief three-day warm spell that included one glorious, fully sunny day and the fleeting joy of seeing grass for the first time in a month. Unfortunately, that small miracle led directly to canceled sledding plans when our nieces and nephews were visiting for the holidays. This season has had different plans than I have from the beginning. I won’t drag you through every hardship of this winter, which, unbelievably, only officially began twelve days ago, but the last two weeks of December included an ice storm, a full day of sixty-mile-an-hour winds, three extended power outages, and four major appliance deaths.

First it was the commercial beverage fridge in the Inn’s dining room that refused to get cold after being unplugged during a long stretch without guests. The mini-fridge we brought in from our house in Ann Arbor as a temporary replacement pulled the exact same move. Four days later, one of our dryers decided to stop heating. Then came the ice storm and the first fifteen-hour power outage the day after Christmas. Luckily, the Inn has a whole-house generator. Unluckily, our apartment was added to the building after it was installed, so our bedroom dropped to fifty-four degrees. By hour twelve of listening to the nerve-jangling sound of the generator running outside our living room window, we were already feeling the anxiety of knowing we could run out of propane if the outage lasted more than a day or two. That’s when the commercial upright freezer in the basement began making an ungodly screaming noise. The only possible response was to unplug it and put it out of its misery until it can be seen by a repairman. This marked the fourth major appliance death in five days. I finally broke down and cried.

Meanwhile, the weather has been unrelenting. You know that scene in the old stop-motion Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer TV special where Rudolph and Hermey the elf are crossing the Arctic tundra on their way to the Island of Misfit Toys? The wind is howling, the snow is blowing sideways, and they are trekking through knee-deep snow drifts. That scene has been playing outside our windows every few days. I’m not kidding. I’m just waiting for “The Bumble” to appear from the pines out back.

Last month, I was able to find the positive lesson in our challenges. The Power of a Pause was my subtitle. If winter weather was going to make us pause, I was determined to find the power in that. December decided to test my conviction in that belief. After more extreme weather and two more extended power outages this week, the subtitle of December could be: Another Pause for No Power. This last month of the year hasn’t offered a lesson or a new perspective. It has simply demanded endurance.

Still, alongside these hardships, there were bright spots in the darkness. We volunteered at an amazing charity event where we made some new friends who also happen to be real-life community superheroes. We dressed up the Inn for the holidays and hosted Aaron’s sisters’ families and his stepdad—twelve people in all—for three days. The Inn came alive with shared meals and laughter around the dining room table, running feet through the hallways, giggles and screams from games of hide-and-seek, and a chaotic and hilarious mass cookie-decorating session. Best of all, our daughter Sophie was here for a week, and watching our favorite Christmas movies and shows together was my favorite Christmas gift. We even managed to sneak in a road trip to spend a day with our aunties in Grand Rapids.

As the end of this month neared and my January 1st deadline approached, I began to panic as I struggled with what to write about at the end of this trying month. Friends who have followed my journey to becoming an innkeeper in a small town often compare my life to a Hallmark movie. And while there are indeed wonderful parts of our life here that sometimes feel too good to be true, like any life, there are also trying days, and sometimes entire months, full of difficult challenges. I didn’t want to write a blog entry that was just a catalog of disappointments, but I also didn’t want to force a positive lesson that didn’t feel true. Last night, I wrote a simple plan in my journal: “Tomorrow: Work on blog for two hours in the morning. See what happens. Add two more hours in the afternoon if the path has not appeared.”

I’m nearing the end of that first two hours now, and this is the clearest path I can see: The lesson of this last month of the year, if there is one, is not about growth or resilience or renewal. It’s that sometimes things don’t go your way and you don’t get to fix them, or reframe them, or make them meaningful right away. Sometimes you just have to sit with the darkness. Sometimes you have to surrender to powerlessness.

After I finished what I thought was my final edit of this entry, I came across a quote by Lori Deschene who created the website Tiny Buddha. It was what I needed to see. It said, “Look around. Somewhere in this moment is something worth appreciating or someone worth thanking. Let your gratitude remind you that even on the darkest days, there’s still love. There’s still light.” The fact that this blog is published on the first day of the first month of a new year gives me a little bit of hope. Scientifically, there will be more light this month than there was last month. Here’s hoping that is true metaphorically as well.

With gratitude,
Erin, Aaron, and Ryan
Keepers of Rustic Gate