Pink Snow

On Valentine's Day I was treated to pink snow. The rising sun cast a rosy glow over the bleak winter landscape of my yard. What a gift this morning!

We have rejoined the land of the living. Last week a virus knocked us down hard. The girls and I lived in a groggy daze, rising from a pile of blankets to get a drink or take some Advil. This virus took all our energy and most of our interest in anything except warmth and sleep. It was nothing serious, I guess. But for a person who likes to get things done, it is hard to do nothing. What a waste, I kept thinking. Just sitting or lying and not DOING.

A little jingle kept going through my head: "Man proposes, God disposes." We plan (and oh, we had lots of plans last week) and whoosh, nothing works out. All our daily routines, meaningless. All we wanted was rest and sleep. A lot of orange juice and V-8 Fusion. Thank goodness I had homemade chicken soup in the freezer. Nothing else sounded good.

When we started feeling a little better, we pulled out some old home videos taken when the girls were little. We never have time to watch these. In fact, I'm sure some of the videos had never been viewed since recording them. Oh, my adorable babies! Why was I so blessed to be given these precious children? My little girls were so joyful, so full of song and dance. And you friends and family, I saw you on those videos too. I saw friends who now struggle with cancer. You didn't know back then what was coming. Fred's sister, gone from this world. She didn't know she had such a short time left. Another friend, on the video with his small children, now paralyzed by disease. How sobering to see the ignorance of our future.

But we are not all doomed by time. I saw younger versions of my boys. Some were going through great difficulties then, but now they are thriving. My girls no longer sing and dance around the house all day, but they are growing into responsible young women with many new interests.

"Come now, you who say, today or tomorrow we will go and do such and such...yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then it vanishes. Instead you ought to say, if the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that." (James 4:13-15.)

So if the Lord wills, we plan to return to comfortable routines today, doing our school work, enjoying family, and living in the moment.