I was in that half-conscious state between sleep and wakefulness early this morning, when I first felt that something was wrong. All wrong. The lighting wasn't right somehow. It was... white. And it was really cold. I shot upright and stared wildly out the window.
It's hard to explain exactly how I feel about snow. Every Autumn, I get some sort of... uneasiness - an urgency to get everything snug, clean, tucked in, so to speak. And it's rather discouraging (to say the least!) to look forward to another winter... well, in the same place.
Autumn is a time of growing for me. A time to cry afresh; "Not my will, but Thine, Lord!" And only after the first snow of the year, when I actually see everything shrouded in white, can I finally seem to be able to let God overcome my despondency and fill me with His joy.
I felt almost overwhelmed this morning with the unreasonably early snow to begin with. Then the extra chores that come with it - thawing out the water lines that had frozen during the night, finding all of the winter chore clothes for the girls from the frigid depths of the storage bus, Ma being gone, and who knows what else, had me in a pretty advanced state of self-pity.
But then I started thinking about how little my troubles were, compared to some, and I started to feel better. When the thought struck me that I was grumbling about the water pipes being frozen, and the winter clothes so hard to get to, when we had running water to thaw out, and nice, warm clothes to unpack, I had to laugh.
The Lord is so good. That's a very common statement, but a very, very true one.
When you look at the world from the palm of God's hand, it's beautiful.
Even snow.
Happy Trails, Folks!