GRACE LIKE SNOW

GRACE LIKE SNOW

I hate the cold, but I love the snow.

I don’t use the word hate flippantly here when I say that I hate to be cold. Cold is the literal worst. That being said, why did I feel so content and happy as my feet hit the frigid floor this morning?

Easy, snow covers a multitude of sins. 

One, I didn’t have to wake up to an alarm today because we have a snow day. Two, I looked out my window, and my heart leapt from the beauty. 

Last night we took the truck out to get our nurse friend to the hospital, and I was a giddy school girl as we drove through a snow covered city. Every house with Christmas lights glimmering through white flakes had me exclaiming the wondrous joy of snow in December. (Side note, my friend was going to walk at least 5 miles in a snow storm to be there in the NICU for her shift because her car couldn’t get up the snow covered hill in her neighborhood. Nurses are amazing.) 

Snow washed away my every worry because I have a bonus day to both relax and catch up on all the tasks that have been weighing me down. 

We played cards, washed dishes, snuggled on the couch with a fire roaring and a movie playing, and simply enjoyed a Sunday evening knowing there would be plenty of time to fit everything in tomorrow. 

Today, I will make rice pudding because it is our warm, sweet snow day tradition, and I will separate the clothes in the ever growing mountain of clean laundry. We will all be home to fold laundry, watch Christmas movies, eat three meals together, and do paperwork/schoolwork. 

Snow brings us together, covers the ugly parts with beauty, and slows the pace of living to something more realistic. It allows us to be present in each moment without the worries of tasks waiting to be done.

Somehow the world is right when it is covered by snow. 

And although I fight the urge to be overly poetic in the middle of this elated state, I find myself wanting to make the metaphorical connection of a life covered in grace as I think of the brown, muddy mess our yard has become from the cold and rain or the barren branches of the winter season. These ugly scenes have been transformed with a clean, white powder and icing even though the cold which caused them remains. 

And isn’t that the way of grace? Doesn’t it take the messes we have made and find a way to transform them? Although the heart may still be cold or the situation unchanged, grace gives what is undeserved and makes life beautiful. There can be peace in the situation full of turmoil. There can be love stirred anew in a relationship that has become mud and mess. 

God, let it snow. Let your grace cover our world with your peace and presence. Let us be present where we are and see the beauty over the mud. Let us know that not everything needs to be fixed in this moment in order for life to be joyful. Help us to stop and breathe in deeply the beauty you have made in each of us.