Mother Nature Lies

It was a near record high yesterday.  So of course, it made sense to schedule our last ski trip of the year for today. Goodbye winter. Hello summer. I broomed the front porch, washed the car, wore a short sleeved tshirt, watched the robins pecking at the new grass seed.
It won't last. Midweek forecast is destined to plunge us all into deep depression. I like winter, but when warmth taunts me, I don't like it any more.

We only have 2 weeks left til Science Olympiad, and only 10 weeks left of school. I have spring fever. I am impatient for all the hard work to be done.

It never is done though. It just changes to new and different hard work.
I wonder if the robins ever look at each other and lament, "This stinks. I mean, all we ever do is pull recalcitrant rubber worms out of hard packed earth. Tug tug tug. All day long, all life long."
I wonder if any of them ever have midlife crises, where they decide they will not eat another worm. Do they decide to just keep heading further south and go to Tahiti and lounge on the beach instead, drinking Mimosas and having their toenails clipped by a handsome bluebird?

"You feel this way at the end of every winter, Robby."
"Yes Roberta, I do, but this year I mean it. I am sick of frozen worms, and shivering when spring is not really here but just faked it....again."
"Sprng will come and you will have a complete change of heart. You will be glad again that you are a robin and can perch in the tree amid the blossoming dogwood."
"Not this time. This time I mean it. No more early birding to get the worm. I am sleeping in and waiting til summer to venture North. These false springs are killing me."

So I am being proactive. Snow and cold is expected in the mountains. Rather than hanging out in the flirting sunshine that we know is just teasing us, I will head to one last fling with Old Man Winter. Then back to the homestretch. I find it strange that those last few moments before victory is in sight are sometimes the hardest. Spring is just around the corner.... why is it suddenly so hard to wait?

Abraham had the same problem. God promised him that he would be the father of many nations, but Abraham was an old man, and Sarah was not producing even one small heir, let alone many nations. So Abrahan took matters into his own hands, and had an heir, Ishmael, through his maid servant Haggar. Then surprise, surprise, Sarah ended up getting pregnant with Isaac and poor Ishmael was out of luck.  A whole assortment of new problems arose as a result. You can't force Spring. Sometimes, you must wait.

And eat frozen worms.

Deuteronomy 11:13-15

 ¹³ So if you faithfully obey the commands I am giving you today—to love the LORD your God and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul— ¹⁴ then I will send rain on your land in its season, both autumn and spring rains, so that you may gather in your grain, new wine and olive oil. ¹⁵ I will provide grass in the fields for your cattle, and you will eat and be satisfied.

Hopeful Petals

The dogs were sniffing at their usual spot when I noticed the small purple petal. Crocus! My daffodils were beginning to show green buds but none had opened yet. But here the crocus were now defying the certain return of frost and cold to brave raising their tender petals to the open air. We stood and marveled at the crocus for a little while.

God is such a good artist, I thought, with a tinge of jealousy. My own wedding portrait art work at home was not going so well. I had begun to paint in my son Matt's face and something was going very wrong with the mouth. I had obliterated it once already, but it was still not right. After many hours, I painted over it with a wash of flesh color and put away my brushes for the day. Karissa, the bride is almost done, and Matt's tux is painted in with a wash that gives an idea of the final color. They are a lovely couple, except for the groom without a mouth.

But the more I thought about it, the more I thought maybe that is the way man and woman should have been created. Man without mouth. "Just do what I say, no back talk, and no one gets hurt," should be in the wedding vows somewhere.
Alas, that is not the way God seems to have envisioned what the world should be. Not only does He give both the bride and groom a mouth, but He expects them to use it responsibly.

This is a tall order, especially if one hopes to be married for a lifetime. Honestly, I know I would have more success if I just hadn't been given a mouth to misuse in the first place. I am not second guessing God. I know He who brought forth the gentle crocus when the bitter cold was still raging around the corner knows best. He knows exactly how to bring a most unlikely hope in the midst of the winters of our lives. Perhaps that is why He longs and desires for marriage to last a lifetime.... it will take that long to paint in the mouth properly.

Psalm 141:3
  ³ Set a guard over my mouth, LORD;
   keep watch over the door of my lips.

Psalm 19:14
 ¹⁴ May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart
   be pleasing in your sight,
   LORD, my Rock and my Redeemer.

Psalm 17:3
  ³ Though you probe my heart,
   though you examine me at night and test me,
you will find that I have planned no evil;
   my mouth has not transgressed.

Hibernating

"I remember now why I left New York," I mumbled, sprawled on the icy driveway rubbing my sore hip.
I had mumbled similar thoughts for the past hour as I chipped away the sheet of ice from our treacherous driveway.
("You have used that word 'treacherous' four times today," Asherel told me later that evening.)

And I as I was splayed on the recliner later, a heating pad over my bruised muscles, rubbing my sore wrists, I decided winter is a season for young people. Of course, raking leaves is no picnic for back and arm muscles either, and I guess cutting the grass in the spring and summer takes its toll on ancient joints and lungs too.  I think it is possible I am crossing the bridge into wimpdom. My mom was running marathons at my age..... I dread to think what I will be like in a few years.

 And it is not even just that the spirit is willing but the body is weak. If I must be honest, the spirit is not all that willing. Chipping icy driveways and falling on cold hard concrete is just not as riveting as settling down with a cup of tea and a good book. I used to be a bundle of energy, but I am becoming lazy.

As I was moaning and settling into the warm recliner, I read an article about the overdriven aspect of modern life. Everything is competitive to the point where students of educational institutions that once used to center on the joy of learning for the sake of being well-learned now center on cramming whatever facts they need into their bursting brains to get the best grade and best job and best house on the block by beating out all the other students. A spirit of communal joy in knowledge and cooperation has been replaced by cut throat competition. The author pointed out in counterpoint that "Lions sleep 20 hours a day."

I thought about that. I don't know what to do about the competitive nature of education, so went straight to thinking about the lazy lion. Why would God have designed a creature that only really lived for 4 hours a day? For that matter, there are tiny frogs in the Sahara that will sometimes burrow for years until a good rainstorm finally shows up. Then they pop out of the ground like pimples on a teenager and start racing around to eat, mate, and hop. As soon as the rain ends, they head back to burrow their life away. And some frogs hibernate in the winter and their bodies, which possess a natural antifreeze slow down so they can last all winter long without needing to kiss a single princess. Some can even withstand their bodies being frozen solid and still thaw out alive in the spring!  My tired mind meandered on pondering these strange facts. For someone who knows all creation points to the Creator, I had to wonder, "Why?"  Why would God create creatures who only reached the potential of liondom, or frogdom for such brief flickers of time? It just didn't make sense to me.....

Except, I realized, in the monumental and everpresent lesson of patience and perseverance. If anything can teach us about that, it is the lion and the Sahara frog. So much of life is spent learning how to wait and while waiting, learning how not to despair.  For example, after six full months of waiting for my book proposal to be read by the agent I am hanging my hopes on, she just wrote to tell me she lost it! (I wrote about this in an earlier blog post.) Then she said if I would resend it, she would read it by Friday....this past Friday. I know all of you who like the lazy lion sleep 20 hours a day while waiting for news about my life were wondering when Friday came and went, why I didn't mention what she said about my book. Well, Friday came and went with no word from her.  I agonized about whether I should bug her, or just wait patiently and while waiting, what should I do? By Tuesday, I was sure that blood vessels were slowly exploding as I held my breath, so I finally broke down and wrote to her.

"I don't mean to bug you....well actually, truth be told, I do mean to bug you...." I wrote.
It turns out she was deathly ill, and ordered to bed and rest for a solid week. She had not forgotten me. She gave no timeline this time on when she would read my proposal and I realized, I must look to the Sahara frog as my guide, and hunker down for perhaps another long season of drought.

I think one of the best Biblical examples of expectant, faithful waiting is Noah. Noah was told to build that big boat, the Ark, in a land that had never seen rain, hundreds of miles from any water. For three years he built a boat while his neighbors all came and laughed at him. So he built and he waited.... and finally the rains came, and he definitely had the last laugh.

So this season of waiting, and resting, is not just a great cosmic flub. It is planned, and ordained, and even blessed! God is always preparing us for something. Sometimes it requires that we hunker down for a good long while, nursing aching joints, or flagging energy, waiting for His call to rain down on us, prompting us to hop into His arms in the fullness of life when to every onlooker, we seemed half dead.

Proverbs 8: 34-35
³⁴ Blessed are those who listen to me,
   watching daily at my doors,
   waiting at my doorway.
³⁵ For those who find me find life
   and receive favor from the LORD.

Long days of winter begin.....

As I started packing away the ornaments, Asherel walked by and wryly commented, "I am surprised you didn't start putting those away at 12:01 a.m. the day after Christmas."
"I thought about it," I said.
I love Christmas decorations, until the day after Christmas. Then I am ready to move on to Spring and maybe even summer vacation. The decorations were up for a solid month, and I had to rearrange our house to fit the Christmas tree in the right corner, so everything was a little cramped and cluttered for a month. I hate clutter. In a flurry of cleaning, while the boys still slept, I carted Christmas away. Now the dreary long months of winter stretch before me.

I would have been cross country skiing instead of cleaning if Mother Nature had cooperated, but she had not. She stopped snowing before there was barely a coating on the grass, and the roads were clear. I did put on my skis and do a few laps in the backyard, in case it was the last snow we saw in ten years.
I used my imagination to provide the excitement during the 1/16 mile loops.
"Is that a bear I see in the distance?" I asked my Pretend Ski Friend.
"I don't think so..." she answered, "In fact, I believe it is a snow covered lounge chair. But they are easily mistaken for bears."
I careened down the "hill" and did my giant shalom around the many dog poop piles.  While it was hard to contain the exhilaration from my little venture into the giant backyard wilderness, I tired of the game after three laps and headed back inside.
"You were only out there five minutes!" exclaimed Asherel.
"Yes, but I had seen all there was to see in four," I explained.

So we have two more days of my beloved boys afterwhich they return to real life. Then our season of craziness commences. We have two final months to build and perfect our helicopter and our trebuchet. There are deadlines for 3 art contests in the next 6 weeks, and we are about a thousand pages behind in biology. Honeybun has an agility trial mid January and we have to schedule some snow boarding trips so Asherel can use her new snowboard. My new art semester starts, and this year is the year I find an agent to represent me and sell my books to an adoring- public- in- waiting.

I look at my clean living room with the same joy I looked at my new Christmas living room a month ago. I know that soon I will not have enough time to clean or sit very long to reflect. It has been a wonderful Christmas vacation but the peace and leisure is about to be sucked away as we hit the new year running. I left one little piece of Christmas on display, however. I left the little creche Asherel made me on the piano where the morning sun rests before marching on with the day.  I left two little angels to guard it- one a gift from my son, the other a gift from our dear friend Polly. Those three things will keep me anchored during the storm of frenzy about to rage around us. The three things that I need to save time and energy and love for- God, family, and friends.

Job 27:10
¹⁰ Will they find delight in the Almighty?
   Will they call on God at all times?

Mere Human concerns

Down coat- yep
wool hat-yep
chemical emergency foot warmer-yep
electric solar powered blanket-yep
emergency high energy rations-yep
a gallon of water for every person-yep
last will and testament-yep

My packing list is all checked and I am ready to fly to visit Nanook and my parents.I have been closely following the weather forecast for the next ten days. It says "snow SHOWERS", with a high of 18.  My sister Holly has been following my Freeze Preparedness regimen with scorn. She says I am a wimp. She lives in Chicago where the kids eat frozen waffles fresh out of the freezer.

I am hopeful that my parents still have their cross country skis. If I am going to die from blood icing my arteries, at least let me go with vistas of snow covered pine tree and the sounds of swooshing skis beneathe my feet.

My training program yesterday included test walking various jeans to see which blend of cotton/polyester could most withstand extreme cold. I had three samples, thus had to walk around the block a minimum of 3 times. And of course there were other variables. I had to test each pair of jeans with first a down coat, and then a wool coat, and then a choice of synthetic or shearling lined boots. If you do the math, this means I had to walk around the block 7,864 times to gather data from each permutation of attire. (For you real mathletes out there, this is just an approximation, which in my world means- a wild guess.)  My study was somewhat flawed in that it was only 40 degrees here in Charlotte, not 18 degrees. I had to do a little statistical analysis to trend my results downward 22 degrees.

... and for the record, I know wool pants are warmer than cotton but there is not ONE pair of wool pants in Charlotte. Believe me, I looked.

However, I did find that the 80% cotton 20% polyester jeans significantly cut the freeze better than the 98% cotton/ 2% spandex.  I must say that the spandex blend jeans were definitely cuter but cute doesn't matter when you are frozen to death with your eyeballs globules of solid ice. I also unequivocally discovered that down is much warmer than wool, and shearling beats synthetic lining. I plan to publish my data in Scientific America, if I do indeed return with all my fingers. (PS- frost bite is a serious matter not to be trifled with. Do you know that when Napoleon attacked Russia in the dead of winter, not unlike what I am about to do, his troops were decimated from 450,000 to 10,000 not from the Russians, but from frost bite? So do not listen to Holly when she calls me a wimp because cold is mortally dangerous.)

But I go to my fate with a smile on my face. I get to see my beloved first born son and my beloved parents, and I get to fly instead of drive 16 hours. I know I face certain discomfort, but the precious souls of my relatives call to me......

It is funny that this reminds me of Jesus when He says He must travel to Jerusalem. His disciples beg Him not to go, but not because He will be facing subfreezing temperatures and potential frostbite. No, they urge Him not to go for a trifling matter that everyone in Jerusalem wants to kill Him.  But He reminds them that discomfort and even death should never dissuade one from doing the Father's will. For the umpteenth time He tells them that the physical world is nothing compared to the spiritual world- and we all need to keep our sights focused on the concerns not of man, but of God.

This is oddly comforting as I head out to a world where the permafrost layer is so close to the surface.

Matthew 16:21-26
 ²¹ From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.  ²² Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. “Never, Lord!” he said. “This shall never happen to you!”
 ²³ Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.”
 ²⁴ Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. ²⁵ For whoever wants to save their life^[f] will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. ²⁶ What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?