When I was a child, I was always fascinated with trite phrases. I enjoyed their quotable nature and how people looked at you like you were smart when you were able to recite them at a relevant time. For example, when someone (probably my little sister) was fatalistically rage-quitting a project because a part of it didn’t go as planned, I would quip, “don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater!” Yeah, I was that kid.
In school, we had a bulletin board that my teachers would redecorate at the beginning of the month, and my favorite was always “March comes in like a lion and out like a lamb”—mostly because of the lion and lamb-themed art projects we would get to do. True to form, I still think of these clever turns-of-phrase and how they are relevant to various aspects of my life.
As we finally put 2021 to rest, this quote definitely came to mind. We rolled into 2022 like we were being chased by a lion! 2021 ended with fires and big snow and led straight into 2022 with threats of war in Kazakhstan, a volcano eruption in the South Pacific leveling half an island nation, resulting tsunamis as far north as Alaska, tornados in Florida, snow in the Carolinas, and underneath it all, an unprecedented, global surge of the Omicron variant. And the lion roared.
While the roar of the lion and all that it carries with it into 2021, the little quote from a little me give me hope, because after the lion stops roaring, the lambs will appear.
It is fitting to think of this during the early part of the year. After the winter holidays are over, many of our Ancestors began the planning for the promised Spring. The lambs who have spent the winter in their mother’s wombs are born, and the gift of milk came to the households, adding much-needed winter protein to the stores. Occasionally, a lamb would be born too early, before there would be any shoots of grass to feed it when it weaned, and these lambs graced the tables to remind the people that they already had what they needed to get them through.
Right now, the lion is still roaring, but there is hope on the horizon. As we look ahead into the coming year to plan what our focus will be and how we will achieve those new goals, we can find comfort in the fact that we are exactly where we need to be, everything is on time, and the lambs will be here before we know it.
May the gift of perspective illuminate what is already around us to carry us through to the Promise of Spring.
