Snow

It is currently Sunday afternoon.  I am sitting by the fire with a cup of hot chocolate.  I had the privilege of hanging out at church with a group of fun kiddos. I managed to fit in my standard twenty minute nap after lunch.  I can check off dinner because my hubby is preparing it as I type on his smoker.    I usually reflect back on the week before I start my column and pick something I have stashed away in my “mental” file cabinet.   There is one key word or one mental file you might say that comes to mind from last week:   SNOW! 

Wednesday morning as I drove across town, I felt like Fairfield was a winter wonderland straight out of a Hallmark Christmas movie.  It was beautiful and white…I mean everything was white and massive snowflakes were still falling!  The sad part of the day was that by noon… it was not white anymore.  The pavement was gray again, cars regained their original paint colors, and the grass was once again just grass.  The hopes of Frosty showing up in a yard or two around town diminished before anyone even had time to fetch the first carrot for his nose. 

The snow was here for a minute and gone the next.  It reminded me of life.  I remember the exact chair I was sitting in at Sammon’s Cancer Center back in October of 2011 when I wrote “Wake UP” big and bold by Psalm 39:4-5 in my pink Bible.  It is about how fleeting life is.  Sure, it is easy to grasp the fact that life is fleeting when everyone around you is sick and you are going back in to have a mysterious lump checked out.  You go to make sure you are still a member of the remission club before you make plans for your next birthday party, knowing and feeling with every step you take towards the check–in counter that life is precious gift. 

Those days are the ones that you take the time to say I love you because life is measured in moments like a metronome used to keep time at a piano.  Life on those days is slow and wonderful because you take it all in, knowing every time your heart beats that it is a gift.  Funerals, hospitals, and even graduations, have a way of making us to appreciate the little things.  All of a sudden, we notice dimples in a cheek, blooms on a flower, and we cherish movie nights at home with everyone gathered in the same room.

What about appreciating life when you are late again, aggravated, tired of studying, sick of being a taxi driver, and just ready to move onto whatever is next?  The mundane and regular old days are when we take life for granted. We just cross days off of the calendar without a thought at all. 

When I stand next to my two sons and they are as tall as me, I realized life is passing too quickly.  When my daughter asks me to come pick her up in town and I realized next year she will be driving, it hits me. When I struggle to pick up my youngest and take her to bed, I remind myself to take it all and hug her tight. She is all the baby I have left. I pray daily to WAKE UP and realize the gifts I have been given.

We are not guaranteed tomorrow.  We nod in agreement when we hear that at funerals and at church, but do we nod in agreement when we hear the alarm go off in the morning and begin “just” another day?    

David wrote in Psalm 39:4 “Show me, O LORD, my life’s end and the number of my days; let me know how fleeting is my life.”  That verse tells me to WAKE UP and make the most of life…to love with Lord with everything I have and to love and cherish the people around me.