since i first knew i’d be moving back to minnesota in january, i’ve been dreading the wintry weather that swirls outside the sliding airport doors. going back to sub-arctic frigid ice-land does not appeal after i’ve lived here 2 years:
january is just about the worst segment of minnesota winters — the temperatures plunge to the negatives, and stay put until they feel like climbing up again, which could be anywhere between february and july. (you think i’m exaggerating? ok, maybe.) i’ve been despairing, fearing the snow, the ice, the wretched bloody wind. this is what i’ve been dreading for months:
… but just today i was catching up on a blog i follow; she said something that made me feel — for the first time — happy about the snow. “The night sky orange from the clouds reflecting lights, the atmosphere hollowed; a padded cave where your steps crunching the snow is all you really hear. It almost demands that you stand still, that you look up. There is a tangible quietness to snow…”
it reminds me of some amazing times snow and i have had together — it can be so peaceful, so fragile and strong, so clean and pure and wonderful. now i remember these pictures too:
there’s another sense in which i’ve been dreading my move back to america — i have found myself feeling fearful, wondering if i can cut it. or will everyone i meet write me off as some third-culture freak who can’t be on-time anymore, who mutters to herself in french, who essentially doesn’t even desire to live in the united states? do i have what it takes to be strong, to endure, to succeed?
then i’m at church on sunday, and pastor joel reads this scripture:
[ephesians 3:14-19] for this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height— to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
…and Jesus reminds me again that He has chosen my path, that He has prepared me, that He will empower me through His Spirit, and those coming trials will serve to help me understand just a little bit more of his amazing, crazy, unshakable love. for me.
all this to say: i’m not scared anymore.
wanderlove 