Are you a groundhog?

I’m actually quite fond of Groundhog Day. It’s a rather silly holiday when you think about it, but some people get pretty worked up over it. When my children were younger, I would tease them way too much about whether or not the groundhog was going to be afraid of his shadow when he popped his head out of the hole.

OK, confession: most of my children are adults and I still talk way too much about the groundhog. But he’s so cute, with his fuzzy little body, short legs and chubby face. And let’s be honest, we all get a little preoccupied this far into winter over whether or not spring will be quick in coming. We all know the mighty groundhog does not have powers of prophecy, but then there are things about the tooth fairy and the Easter bunny that we also avoid pointing out in certain company.

My personal opinion is that we have a strange fascination with the groundhog because, deep down, we all relate to him — maybe a little more than we want to admit. We all have those metaphorical tunnels where we burrow in and get comfortable and we really aren’t at all interested in poking our head out of the hole to see what might be going on in the world beyond our personal comfort zone.

Sometimes with great encouragement from those around us, or perhaps from our own forced willpower, we gather sufficient courage to just take a peek at what life might be like above ground. Then we get a glimpse of a shadow of something we don’t understand and we duck back inside, unaware of our own foolishness in the fact that the shadow was created by our own presence in the sunlight.

Some years ago I was doing my best to give help and support to a friend who was going through a terrible time in her life. Changes were being forced upon her that were not of her choosing, and it was triggering some pretty horrible things that had happened in her past. I prayed for a way to be able to help her see that there was something better beyond the life she’d been living, and that to see herself in a new light could bring about great things for her and the people who loved her.

An idea popped into my head which couldn’t have possibly been my own original thought, because I’m just not a very clever person without divine intervention. I told my friend to imagine that she had been raised in a third-world country, where starvation and lack of safety were everyday issues. “Then imagine,” I said, “that some kind people in America sponsored you to come to the States and begin a new life.”