snow falls {and my grip falls}

Snow falls, and the gathering white arrests our attention.  Somewhere between bacon sizzling and deftly wacking the eggs against the clear bowl with the tiny chip just there, my phone rings.  An automated message from the school system.  The voice comes through just a little too loud, and I lift my coffee cup (poured steamy the second time) for a sip.

I don’t do well with interruptions or uncertainties.

And just like that the day changes, and I feel the daily minutiae slip from my careful hands, right off the pages of my planner.  I stare at the neat row of lunches on the kitchen counter.  Riley sits at the bar just over them, sleep still settled like a veil over her light skin, and I can’t help but wish the call had come just twenty minutes earlier, when I might have silenced the alarm that woke her for another school day.  She rubs her nose with her hand, looking up from her tablet.  “Huh?  Mom?  What are they saying?”

“2 hour delay…because of snow.”

“Oh, yea,” she says, and her face brightens with relief.  A few more hours to be home, a few more hours away from the stress of school.

“I just wish they had called before you woke up,” I say, exchanging my gratitude for a criticism.  So often, that choice comes as easy as breathing.  “You could have slept in.”

“Oh,” she says, and her voice slides down, immediately repentant, as though this comment somehow highlights an inadequacy of her own.

“It’s not your fault, sweetie.  I just meant that you might have wanted to sleep a bit more.  It’s okay for you to be awake.”  She accepts what is,  without really even considering what might have been.  I walk to the window, drawing back one of the curtains to squint into the still dark.  Nothing.  I drop the curtain and return to the kitchen and breakfast.  2 hour delay? For what?  I lift my phone and hit the button to check the forecast.  Light snow.  Yesterday, I found it warm enough to squeeze in a run in the morning.  Whatever this weather may be, it can’t possibly stick.

And then again, Riley brightens.  “What will you do today?” She asks, and suddenly I start counting hours and measuring the new, much smaller spaces between the boxed appointments in my planner.  Now if the kids go to school at all, I will be juggling drop offs and trying to make it everywhere on time.  I feel stress collecting at the base of my neck, a dense throb that will turn into pain before the end of the day.

It’s subtle, the way something good becomes an idol.  I map out the next week the week before, drawing boxes in pencil around specific time commitments, curvy, free-flow bubbles around gifted bits of expected joy.  I make it a habit to look a month a head and consider what must be handled in advance.  I strive for balance and appropriately reflected priorities.  I consider organization and planning good stewardship, a strategy for effective service.  But if I rely on my planning for peace, if I use this illusion of control as my anchor,  I have made an idol of what should only be a tool.

Outside, light softly, silently comes, and with it the fat, white flakes, blanketing our day with beauty.  Adam wakes and wanders downstairs, stopping still in front of a window, content just to watch the snow fall.  He stands captivated by the gentle changes in the trees, the grass.  He reminds me, sometimes, to see.

But as it happens, today I am captured by my to do list and all the neat plans I had for accomplishment.  I know what this will mean:  deadlines don’t melt away with the weather.  The snow falls, and with it falls my grip.  Hours disappear and I feel adrift, because nothing happens on time and everything is interrupted and I bounce from task to task, unsure exactly what I’ve done or what remains.  I’ve lost my anchor and I can’t find land.  Yes, that’s it.  These snow days and days and days make me feel lost at sea.  And that’s when I realize that my organized plan has become the thing I depend on for peace.  I look up from my work, and my son stands anchored at the window, watching, his breath coming slow, like the snowfall, and Riley sits content at the bar, writing gratitude with rainbow pens.  And the Spirit moves, reminding me.

I walk to my computer where I’ve been making graphic art for a teaching coming, and it’s an image of two soul-hungry men lost at sea with these words etched The Reason He Came.  “I am the way,” He said (John 14:6), and it wasn’t so we’d have another reason to congratulate ourselves on self-righteousness.  It’s because He is the way, not careful planning or advanced degrees or amassed wealth or human ability or good health or winning pubic opinion.  The early church referred to each other as followers of The Way (Acts 24:14), for just this reason.  I have known this for so long, have felt it, have lived it.  Again and again He has shown me, that He is the answer to my questions of how, stretching the boundaries of my faith.  And still so subtly it happens that I replace the real anchor for an illusion.

I leave Adam’s plate on the table and stand beside him, watching the snow begin to collect.  Enough of this, and everything will just be white.  Snow always reminds me of Jesus.  Come now, let us settle the matter, says the LORD, though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow (Isaiah 1:18).  He is the pristine white robe worn by every new soul, and in just the way the weather upends my schedule, he upends a life, re-centering it on Himself.  Snow falls, and Word falls, and Adam I stand washed in early light.  Word says, “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like the shifting shadows (James 1:17),” softly now, and “The Lord himself goes before you and will be with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you.  Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged (Deut. 31:8),” and, lightly drifting, “now to him who is able to do more than all we ask or imagine according to his power at work within us, to him be glory (Ephesians 3:20, 21).”  I want to turn up a hand and let it gather there. “We have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us (2 Cor. 4: 7),” and so lightly, “trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding (Proverbs 3:5),” and covering us stunning, “whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the LORD, not for human masters (Col.3:23).”  Right there in front of the window, He redefines my work.  He recasts my accomplishment.  He reminds me that nothing can be the way, or the why, or the how, apart from Him.  He is the anchor I will never lose, not in the deepest sea, or the greatest storm.

And when I hold fast to Him, my organized plan can be a tool but not my master.  Because no matter how things look to me, the truth is that He is able.