Speaking of pictures, somewhere I have a picture of our boys as toddlers, making their way through the paths we'd shoveled from the front and back door to the road. The walls of the paths were taller than the kids! And there's a picture I took to show a friend in Texas that Maine winters weren't all that bad -- I'm wearing snowshoes, standing on the two or three feet of snow in the front lawn, shoveling snow off the roof!
All this to say ... my family and I like snow. Love it, actually. And now we live in Charlottesville, Virginia where they close the schools because of a "prediction of precipitation later in the day that might cause icy conditions." There might be icy conditions on the roads later in the day, so they pre-preemptively closed school. I do understand that even slightly icy conditions can be treacherous, especially if you're not used to driving with ice on the road, and you live on one of the way-back-there country roads. I get that, and I'm glad the schools put the kids' safety first. Still, it's hard not to make fun of school being canceled for a Prediction-of-Precipitation-Later-in-the-Day day.
Even when it does snow here, very often the temperatures shoot right back up within a day or two and everything melts. In Maine, the first flakes to fall at the end of October could still be on the ground, under a mountain of their followers, at the time Mud Season begins in what others call the Spring. Here? You can be back out in a tee shirt and shorts by the end of the week.
It does get cold, though. Not Ithaca, Boston, or Yarmouth cold, but cold enough. And when it does, invariably someone in the family will say something to the effect of, "I don't mind the cold ... as long as there's snow on the ground. Without the snow, what's the point of so much cold?"
In other words ... if only there was snow, the cold would be okay. Most of us probably know that feeling -- if only. If only finals were over. If only I could get that promotion. If only my wife didn't have to work so hard. If only my dad wasn't sick. If only ... if only ... if only. It is so easy for us to fall into "if only" thinking, so easy that we don't even always know when we're doing it.
The problem with "if only" is that it pulls us out of our lives as they are. Because the truth is, no matter how much I prefer my cold days to have snow in them, the cold day I'm alive in today doesn't. But when I focus too much of my energy into "if only there were snow," I miss the possibilities in the day as it is. I miss this day, because I'm pining away for that day, even thought that day doesn't exist.
Around a decade ago I wrote a sermon exploring all of this, using as my jumping off point a couple of lines from a Willie Nelson song. (I wrote a brief synopsis on my blog A Ministers' Musings.)
Here I sit with a drink and a memory. / I'm not wet, I'm not cold, and I'm not hungry. / Classify these as good times. Good times.I know that I can layer my life with so many expectations and desires, so many if onlys, that I forget to be satisfied with what I do have. Maybe you do, too. If only we didn't ...
Pax tecum,
RevWik
