Perfect Snow Day

Since you all know me, you all know I like snow.  There's a lot of snow-haters out there right now and I get it, I do.  Some of you loved snow about two months ago but hate it now.  Some of you never liked it and you were up front about it.  Others tolerate it because, let's all be honest, it is beautiful but you cannot wait for it to melt and for the sun to shine its warmth on us again.  And then there are the ones like me who drive the rest of you crazy.  The ones who post things like "It's snowing!!!!" followed by smiling faces intermingled with snowflakes and thumbs up.  The ones who secretly hope for blizzards and relish in "snow days" with or without kids.

When I was growing up, I used to love to walk through the woods during a snow storm.  The silence was so tangible you could actually hear snowflakes touching the ground.  The beauty was breathtaking.  Pine trees with branches laden with snow.  Creeks with half-frozen waterfalls and icicles hanging from barren berry bushes and backwoods brush.  It was magical and surreal.  I thought nothing could be more beautiful than the untouched landscape of newly fallen snow.

And to that end, I may be right.  If you are looking for perfect beauty, unmarred by dirt and untouched by anything or anyone, I'm not sure you can find a more beautiful sight.  It's just pure and white and clean and... perfect.  But is that what real beauty is?

Today we got snow in Kentucky!  I (silently) rejoiced!  It actually laid and accumulated and in some places where it drifted, it was even "deep".  One of my neighbors who has been here for 3 winters told me this is the  most snow she's seen in her time here.  The kids had off school and by the time I got home from work, the hill between Latimer Blvd and Tennet St. was full of sleds, riders, observers, and merry-makers.  People were posting on the Kalas Village facebook page things like, 'Feel free to grab the sleds on our porch and use them if you don't have any" and "We've got tea, coffee and cookies - stop in and warm up!"  Crock pots full of soup, Panera bread and bagels (donated to the seminary by our local Panera Bread) warming up in ovens, hot chocolate flowing freely and lots of laughter.  I really don't see the downside to all of this (the cold, the snow, the ice, the cabin fever, the longer school year... I know... I just don't see all that).  To me, it was absolutely beautiful.

But is was not perfect.

There were tracks all through the snow.  In front of my house, boys had played a game of football in the snow.  The hill was covered in sledding tracks.  Boot prints marred the snow-covered landscape around all my windows where kids had played and run and attempted to build snowmen.  It was messy.  It was disturbed.  It was not perfect.  It was beautiful.

Life is beautiful.  It's not beautiful because it's perfect.  It's beautiful because life has happened in it.  Sometimes life is messy.  Some of the tracks today led to dilapidated snowmen and unfortunate sled crashes.  There were tears today.  There was sadness today.  People were cold today.  But that is all part of the beauty of life.  You show me a perfect life, like that first landscape I described, and I will tell you it is either a facade or a place of great loneliness.

We need to embrace all of life.  It is all part of what makes up a beautiful landscape in our lives.  I have seen friends go through some of the deepest sorrow I think you can experience here on earth and do it with such beauty and grace, I am humbled to have even known them.  They saw the beauty in the mess.  Hiding our mess and pretending all is perfect doesn't do anything for anyone, including us.  It sends a message that only perfect is beautiful.  But if we live thinking only perfect is beautiful, then we miss life's greatest beauty.

Forgiveness is beautiful.  Grace is beautiful.  Mercy is beautiful.  All of those beautiful things are that way because of messes.  My favorite verse every time it snows is, "Come now, let us reason together.  Though your sins are as scarlet, they shall be white as snow.  Though they are red like crimson, they shall be as wool."  Beauty from ashes.  Imperfect perfection.

As I watched the boys outside "wreck" the perfect landscape, I was struck with all of the above thoughts and overwhelmed by God's great love, that He would leave the only true perfect place and join us in our mess to show us how He loves us.  And that is the most beautiful perfect thing of all.  Happy snow day everyone!  (haters and lovers alike)