Sunlight and Icicles

March in Michigan. One week ago shone 60° and sunny. The weekend poured wet and windy, thunder shaking the sky. Today: 19° and icy.

This morning’s flow was less than smooth. I moved slow and the clock moved fast. I left late (it’s my modus operandi). Up and down the stairs, in and out the door for forgotten earrings, cell phone, and water jug (8 glasses a day, right?). And wouldntja know, there’s frost on the windshield. Not the nice kind that’s easy to scrape off. No. The fine, dust-like kind that grips the glass for all it’s worth and scrapes off in itty bitty fits and starts.

I scrape off the driver’s side – good enough, I’m already ten minutes late – and go. And then, THE SUN. Oh, my, the sun. I can barely see, and that’s with the shades on. So I continue on my careful, blinded way. The water jug spills. It’s cold. The big truck ahead of me is sooooo slooooow…. I really hate driving to work, you know?

But then two things happen. (They are the still small whisper finding its way into my pea brain.) Francesca Battistelli starts belting it out: “This is the stuff that drives me crazy”. In a moment without the sun burning my retinas I catch a glimpse of the trees. For a second breathing escapes me. Every tiny branch is sheathed in ice, sparkling in that sunlight. I think “God has sculpted an ice garden”, and it occurs to me that the sun and the ice are His creations and they are not here to vex me. They are here to remind me: He loves me and gives me beauty.

And Francesca is singing “This is the stuff You use….” Amen.