Let it Snow

This is what I see when I look out my window from the nook where I write.  Believe it or not, usually I see the view of a pond – with woods in the background and occasionally sunshine. Not today. Or even this week – or this month.

But that’s ok.

I love the snow.

It’s so quiet.

That emotion, a love for the snow hit me in early December of this year as we were getting off the airplane after spending two weeks in Western United States.  I expected the fondness to wear off in days or certainly by the end of the Christmas season.

Every other year for as long as I can remember, I’ve been itching for cold winter to give way to spring.  January seemed intolerable, dull, dreary and sullen.  But after experiencing the dreamed about and drooled over sunny California, I realized something.

There is more to life than sunshine.  

If you want the amazingly perfect beautiful sun with an ocean and mountains in the same view, then LA will deliver.  However, along with that perfectness comes lots and lots and lots of traffic.  And lots and lots and lots of people.  And lots and lots and lots of buildings.  And lots and lots of noise.

You have to take the good with the bad.

And there is both in every situation.  Think you want your friend’s live? She has the fancy car and expensive jewelry? You don’t know every tear that falls as she cries herself to sleep at night because no matter what she does she can’t seem to win her husband’s approval.  What about the other friend, the one who has the perfectly obedient and adorable children? You don’t know about the struggles with insecurity and fear that drive her.

As for Ohio? It has its good and bad too.  There are lots of good things – family and friends, an awesome church, and lots of space and quiet. And right now, at the end of January – even the bad seems pretty good. Nothing has changed. The weather is still bitterly cold, dreary and snowy.  Actually, everything changed.   It’s all in the perspective.

Phil 4:11 “…For I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content.”