PRACTICE: Close your eyes and imagine swirling snowflakes.
To a southerner, a forecast of snow is like yelling “fire” in a crowded room. We run from our homes to hunt for milk, eggs, and bread. Um, how exciting. Swirling snowflakes was my status as I sat peering out the window of my “she shed” on January 6th. Just five days earlier, I had eaten breakfast on the deck in seventy-five-degree weather. The timeframe from the first to the sixth had produced a mélange of emotions in me. Exactly one year had passed since my oldest living brother became one of the thousands that entered the hospital with Covid 19 on New Year’s Day and died on January 6th.
The snow was falling fast and furiously. It started as predicted at 8:00 AM and a half an hour later, the street, grass and sidewalk were covered, and the temperature had fallen 4 degrees.
The snowflakes reminded me of the 31,536,000 seconds that I had lived since my brother died. Each snowflake begins as a clear water droplet as is uniquely shaped as it falls through different temperature and humidity zones in the atmosphere.
Each second that I had lived since January 6, 2021, had been shaped by the differing zones in my environment. One of those zones was the grief of losing a brother superimposed on the memory of the joy he bought to our family.
Because of the way they refract light, snowflakes appear white even though they are formed from clear water.
The millions of seconds I have lived since he died did not all refract light. Some met my dark places as I struggled to understand his death and asked, “why my brother?” The seconds were birthed from the same source but fell to the ground of my everyday existence in varying colors.
The falling snow on the anniversary of what was a dark day for me personally and for my country, reminded me that my time on earth was/is finite. Yet I get to play a leading role in the seconds that form the days. I get to influence how the seconds(snowflakes) look to the naked eyes as they settle on the grass, streets, and sidewalks of my life. The next morning, the pristine cover of snow was undisturbed except for a single path of footsteps along the front walkway and across the grass into the neighbor’s yard. I saw that path as a visible sign that I had been released from the grips of grief.
PS---On Christmas Eve of 2021, I tested positive for Covid. Obviously, my outcome was different from my brother’s…our seconds passed through different zones.
Epiphany is the first major Christian celebration of the year, occurring annually on January 6th. Epiphany reminds us that Light has come. Epiphany is an invitation to see in a new and clearer way.
James 4:14
PONDER THIS THOUGHT--- 31,536,000 seconds, 365 days use them wisely.
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