Tag Archives: snowed-in

Birthday Week – 2016 – Making Memories and Treasuring Them – and the Winter Storm Jonas

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My dad and I share a birthday week each year. His birthday comes the day before mine. After all, I tell him, he will always be older than me. That joke doesn’t register anymore for him, because he doesn’t remember now that it was funny to us…before. Before Alzheimer’s.

For most of my years, even with living either overseas or out of state, we’ve celebrated our birthdays together. This year we traveled to Georgia for his birthday but would travel back home on mine. That was one of the many differences of this birthday week.

When I captured this image (above) as he talked to one of his grandchildren on the phone, it reminded me of an older picture of him, from many years ago.IMG_0004 (5)Dad was often on the phone, answering calls from people who needed his handiness for one reason or another. He was always happy to serve others and he was quite good at it. I wonder, as his strength and memory have faltered in the last couple of years, if he misses those days. So many phone calls…so much purpose in his life. It’s different now, for Dad. He often doesn’t remember even who called a few minutes earlier. For us, though, his life still has purpose.

We have this season to show him love like he showed us for so many years. We are grateful for him…and for what we’ve learned from him. For the joy of just knowing him…and being in his life.Blog - Birthday Week - Dad, Steph, BarbaraBlog - Birthday Week - Dad, Dave, Debbie

Every time I visit, we go through his picture books to help him remember. We also make new memories together. I’m not sure how many he remembers, but I believe that he remembers that we love him.Blog - Birthday Week - DadBlog - Birthday Week - Dad and Pastor DavePhoto: Dad & his pastor, David Lyle, who visits him regularly.

Dad and I didn’t have my birthday together this year. Dave and I needed to get back home. This would be the start of a very different birthday for me. My computer crashed while we were away, so I wasn’t able to write for days. Then winter storm Jonas would wreak beautiful havoc on our city over the weekend. Family dinner with our kids was cancelled, as was the game night with friends I was looking forward to. No date night with Dave.

The pity party for one was just getting started…and then I came back to my senses.

Before the massive snowfall, on the evening we arrived back home from Georgia, we had our regular weekly gathering of our community group from church. It was all the more special this week because they surprised me by remembering the day – being with these sweet friends lifted my heart so much.IMG_3105

No matter how old we get, we have certain expectations about birthdays. Some may not like to be celebrated…and I’m not much for being the center of attention myself. Still, to be remembered by friends and family with gifts of words, kindnesses, time…it is really quite extraordinary…and it encourages me to want to be more like those friends and those family members.

Thank you for making this birthday, overshadowed by much travel and an enormous snow storm, one that I will treasure. It taught me the lesson all over again to take nothing for granted and all things as gifts from a loving God who lavishes good on us through all sorts of people and experiences.IMG_3173

Winter storm Jonas shut down the rest of this birthday week. So beautiful and at the same time paralyzing.Blog - Birthday Week - SnowBlog - Birthday Week - Snow - BerriesBlog - Birthday Week - Snow - Birds

I was reminded of a devotional from Streams in the Desert:

“There is no music in a rest, but there is the making of music in it.” In our whole life-melody the music is broken off here and there by “rests,” and we foolishly think we have come to the end of the tune. God sends a time of forced leisure, sickness, disappointed plans, frustrated efforts, and makes a sudden pause in the choral hymn of our lives; and we lament that our voices must be silent, and our part missing in the music which ever goes up to the ear of the Creator. How does the musician read the “rest”? See him beat the time with unvarying count, and catch up the next note true and steady, as if no breaking place had come between.

Not without design does God write the music of our lives…If we sadly say to ourselves, “There is no music in a ‘rest,’” let us not forget “there is the making of music in it.” The making of music is often a slow and painful process in this life. How patiently God works to teach us! How long He waits for us to learn the lesson!” —Ruskin

This lament of a “forced rest” may seem strange to those of you who love to sled or play otherwise in the snow… I love the snow also. My heart struggle came with the snow. It kept me from being with others whom I wanted to be with and had all sorts of expectations in that wishing…because it was my birthday. Right? Sigh….

The snowstorm affected us all differently. For me, it was that forced rest…a time to consider God’s goodness, in the quiet reflections of a snowy winter weekend. A time to reflect and a time to repent…of expectations misspent.

I am so blessed…so blessed. Thinking of my dad, at the winding down of his life…dealing with memory lost, with strength waning…and yet he takes joy in the smallest of graces. That is a prescription for contentment for all of us.Blog - Snow - Mariah KingPhoto Credit: Facebook.com

We share a birthday week…and my dad, and this storm Jonas, reminded me of all the good woven into every situation of life…if we quiet our minds and look for it…it can be found.

IMG_3220 (3)[Dave’s card to me…on this very different and blessed birthday.]

As the sun sets on the winter storm Jonas, what did you take away from these days of a different sort? I would love to hear about it…IMG_3254 (2)

Snow Days – Sledding & Snowcream & So Much More

 2015 Feb 16 Winter Storm Octavia - Snow 014 “Come now, and let us reason together,” Says the LORD, “Though your sins are as scarlet, They will be as white as snow; Though they are red like crimson, They will be like wool.” – Isaiah 1:18

“For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, And do not return there without watering the earth And making it bear and sprout, And furnishing seed to the sower and bread to the eater; So will My word be which goes forth from My mouth; It will not return to Me empty, Without accomplishing what I desire, And without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it.” – Isaiah 55:10-11

The one great snow storm of 2015 in eastern Virginia has run its course. What a fine run it was, too. No school all week.Snow Days - Teachers

I love the snow…and the snow days it brings. Maybe if I endured it for months on end and had to slip and slide through it to work all winter, I wouldn’t love it. For all of us, though, there is something wondrous about fresh-fallen snow, sparkling in the morning sun, or brightening the colors of a gray winter world. Sledding and snow cream* were made for this kind of snow…new and unmarked.

My husband says shoveling snow is the adult version of playing in the snow.Dave Shoveling Snow Feb 2015

I’m not sure our sons would agree.2010 January 011

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Because of our Southern US family roots and our years living in Africa, we haven’t had many snow days. Once while we were back in the US with my husband doing graduate studies, we had a huge ice storm in North Carolina. Our youngest son had prayed for snow…and he got more than he prayed for. Fuji002 024

Pine trees heavy with ice dropped limbs all over the yard. One actually pierced through our roof on its way down. We heard the hit and searched out the damage. Opening our daughter’s closet door, the branches from that limb whooshed out with that beautiful scent of pine and the wet cling of ice melting on the clothes. It was straight out of C. S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Blog - snow days - Narnia

One winter just a few years ago, we knew the snow was coming, and we preemptively gathered our young adult children into one place for a few days. It is a sweet, sweet memory for me. Those days of “together under one roof” are rare and special, and snow days made it possible. They played and laughed together, and we drank hot chocolate and told stories in front of the fireplace.   2010 January 033

That year a beautiful young friend joined us to make snow angels and would later become part of the family.Snow Days 15 Snow Days 16 SNow Days 11

Another thing I love about snow is its whiteness. Even the Bible talks about how God makes the dreadful darkness of our sin white as snow. The white of the snow reminds me of those verses and God’s promises in those verses, fulfilled through Jesus. The sunlight glitters like diamonds on the snow in the early morning. That snow whiteness seems to highlight and sharpen all the other colors around it. 2015 Feb Phone Pics 215 Snow Days 3 Blog - Snow Days 19 Blog - Snow Days 2 Snow Days 8

Then there is the quiet of snow. Only the crunch underfoot disturbs the silence of a world stopped by the soft white lightness of snow. The shovels will come out, by necessity, and the plows will scrape and clear. The families of little ones will make all kinds of happy noise outside .  All those are welcome sounds, but there is something altogether other-worldly in the sunrise-quiet of a snowy morning.Snow Days 4

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Lastly, the birds in snow are such a mystery to me. How they fluff up their feathers to stay warm, how they forage for food in such a seemingly hostile environment.  It seems a small kindness to feed the birds but in that I am reminded of how the Lord Himself cares for them (Matthew 6:26). 2015 Feb Snow & American Idol 002

Tomorrow, the highs will soar to the 50s, and rain is predicted. These snow days of 2015 will be finished. It was a great run. Now, Spring, come.2015 Feb Phone Pics 213

Snowcream Recipe

Six Best Bible Verses About Snow

Photo Credit for Lucy Entering Narnia from the Wardrobe

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