This weekend I most willingly accepted the offer to get snowed in at Matt and Leslie Sloan's house. Best decision ever. In about one hour we had at least 4 inches on the ground and only a few short hours later at least 7 had fallen. Even as I write this the snow is still coming down. Of course, I am really prepared and have no camera but I guess I'll just steal some of Leslie's amazing pictures that I'm sure will be taken tomorrow.
I also happen to take a late night walk through the neighborhood in the snow, alone. As you may know things have been a little (understatement) rough lately and I feel completely beaten down and stripped of any strength I thought I ever had. While walking tonight I did a lot of things. I cried (frozen tears of course), I yelled, I threw lots of snowballs at stop signs and I shuffled through snow that came up at least to mid calf. As I was walking down the street, there were two very clear paths I could take. Some idiot had tried to drive in the snow and had left some tire tracks where the snow was only about 4 or 5 inches deep. In the middle on the other hand the snow was pushing 10-12 inches. Well me being crazy as I am began to take the harder path of course. Trudging about 20 yards up the road, it was in that moment that it hit me, what the heck was I doing walking in middle when I could be walking in the much shallower snow where someone had gone before me? It was still a hard walk but obviously a little more comforting knowing I had tracks to follow.
And that is when I stopped and thought about my life recently. Through all of this I have been trying to bravely soldier on and push through without slowing down much to give myself time to decompress. I've been trying to drag myself through the deep pile of snow instead of giving myself fully to Christ and letting him lead me through the deep snow that still sucks but not as much with Him by my side. And it was at the end of this week when I think I finally got it. Who knows? maybe tomorrow I'll go back to trying to push on through but I sure hope not.
God has clearly told me he wants my full and undivided attention and I've been giving him only part of myself pretending that it is all.
It was this week when I found out I have/had a stress fracture, a good family friend was diagnosed with cancer, and a college friend's dad died after a routine surgery, that I finally stopped. And now I am snowed in, something that I am not going to take lightly. I am tired, no, I'm exhausted. I mean, I fell asleep standing up at a Donna Buffalo show at the Orange Peel in Asheville and it was loud. Really, who does that?? Everything in me is screaming to stop and now I have to listen.
I have nothing left. Tonight while trudging through the snow I took several minutes to just stop and listen. I have always loved crazy snow storms because literally all life stops. The silence and stillness in incredible and sometimes much welcome. I stood in the middle of Fanning Bridge Road (a major road) and looked up and down the street at the stillness. Everything was covered in a thick blanket of beautiful white glistening snow. It was at this point I felt God nudging me to let Him really cover me like that. To take everything in my life, not just the things I want him to have, to open my clenched fists and let him grab my hand. I'm really frustrated it has taken a whole lot of crap to get me to this point but I'm slowly actually learning from experience that life is just going to be full of crap. Doesn't mean I have to like that fact but I've got to learn to go through it with Christ knowing his Love will somehow carry me through every freaking day, even when I don't feel like it will. People die, people get sick, move, or just disappear from our lives. And it sucks. It sucks really bad. But I can't imagine going through these things alone with no one to be there to love you. God has definitely been using other people from the start to show me but a small portion of his love for me (which is far too large for me to comprehend) but I've been too blind to see it.
Unfortunately it has taken death, sickness, tiredness, sadness, and even a gigantic snow storm for God to actually have my attention. Think I'm a bit stubborn? Well, he has it and somehow I've got to start to let go of myself completely.
Now there's a scary thought...
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