Wordful Wednesday- Winter

Weather. 

I grew up in Albuquerque.
In Albuquerque, you don't really think about the weather.  It just is.  It is usually nice.  And if it's not, it will be soon. 

And then I married someone from the Midwest.  My in-laws talked about the weather all the time.  I did not understand their obsession.  We lived by the water and in beautiful places with moderate conditions.  Weather was still basically a non-event.  In Hawaii, you wake up expecting sunshine, and if it is not sunny, you are surprised.  In the Puget Sound region, for at least a good part of the year, you wake up expecting clouds, and if there are none, you are suprised.  But weather was rarely an event. 

Until we moved to Omaha.
Weather is most decidedly an event in Omaha.  In the spring, severe storms bring wind sheers and sudden torrential rainfall and tornado watches and warnings.  In the summer, heat and humidity create that still air that completely stifles.  With fall arrives that lovely but ever so brief lull until winter.  And then, there is winter.

This winter, we have experienced two blizzards, record-breaking low temperatures, a solid week of fog, and then, today, ice.  I was to meet a friend for breakfast early this morning.  I slipped off my front steps and then proceeded to slide over the glazed sidewalks to my driveway.  Once at the foot of the driveway, I considered how would I could possibly make it up that tiny but VERY steep incline into the car.  There was nothing to hold on to.  There was nothing to grip.  The audience watching the hidden camera of my life was surely laughing at my baby steps, my inability to move forward, to even stay upright.  Thankfully, there was yet a border of snowpack that provided cold, but solid, footing.  Once in the car, I dare not get back out to scrape the ice off the windows.  I slid the car down the driveway, popped it into four-wheel-drive, turned on the defrost, and got out to scrape, while fervently hoping the emergency brake would hold and the car would not start sliding backwards while I chipped away at the windshield.

Walking outside my house this morning, you can audibly hear the ice on the trees and wires, creaking and cracking.  I wonder how long branches, heavy with ice, already stressed by earlier snows, will hold before snapping under the added weight of their glossy coatings.  I wonder how much longer the creaking and cracking of my soul will hold before the thaw and promise of spring arrives.

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.  Hebrews 11:1  That is the promise that keeps my footing sure even on icy ground.

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