The year the snow fell

The optimistics said, "Probably not. Don't count on it."

The realists said, "Prepare yourself. It isn't happening."

I consulted with the experts, the marriage and family specialists, the preachers, the teachers, the wise church women and the gossiping ones. They all said the same. "Sorry, but probably not."

Some laughed. Some scoffed. Some rolled their eyes and told me to try harder, as if a young girl could control the winds. 

Some told me to chase a new dream - but how could a girl do that when her entire identity is in the dream she has searched so long for?

The wisest of them though, they knew the fear of the Lord. So we waited and we prayed. We prayed and we waited. The leaves fell, winter came, and the summer rains fell hard onto the earth. Not this year.

I changed locations again and again. I moved from house to house, seeking and searching, waiting and wishing. I praised and I cried and still, the same answer. 

Time passed. Too much time.

Would my husband ever know her? Would my children ever see her?

Would I ever have a husband or children, or would I destroy myself in my search? Would I be too broken and tired, too hopeless to submit another to my own weary quest?

I consulted one last expert with the age of my father but with wisdom unsurpassed. 

"Go home." It was his only advice.

Go home? Home to the heat and the bugs and the sub-tropics? To the place that I left?

Surely, what I wanted, what I needed, would not be there.

We prayed harder than ever before. 

I looked up into the sky in the front yard of my youth - nothing. It was still too warm.

I boarded a plane, then I boarded some more. Winter was ending soon, so I headed north and crossed an ocean on a gamble.

A week passed. Then two.

And then the snow began to fall.

Slowly, slowly at first the snow fell, treading its ground lightly.

"Don't get too excited," the locals said. "It won't last."

So we waited and we prayed. We prayed and we waited. 

It was a familiar dance, year after year. 

The thermostat continued to drop. The heat subsided. 

The skies opened up and poured down.

"Be careful," they said. "The pavement is slippery. Don't get attached, snow always melts."

But a bridge covered in ice is harder to burn than a bridge dry and crumbling from the scorching heat.

The snow had fallen because He is risen, the God of snowfalls and blizzards, brokenness and mothers. We waited and we prayed. We prayed and we waited until He answered.

The earth is yours

I vividly remember the conversation (read as: monologue) that I had with God over a year ago.

"Hey, God? I just thought I would let you know that I am applying for Oxford... whether you tell me to or not. I kind of just thought that I should let you maybe have a say in it. I guess I should kind of pray about it and I would be a bad Christian if I didn't, so I guess maybe if you want me to go, let me get accepted, and if you don't, then I guess I'll have to be okay with being denied. This is the only semester I can go, so I guess I'll take your no for a no and not apply again later. Amen."

It was not one of my finer moments.

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This semester is going to shake me.
It is a trial run for everything I think I want in my life.

Over the next four months I will live in a foreign nation.
I will study my two loves: Christian ministries and social work.
It is everything I think I want.

My tutorials will blend my two loves together, hopefully weaving the two interrelated fields together in such a way that I have a clear picture of where my career may be headed. My semester will be in a foreign land, testing my proposed calling to live overseas.

The semester is going to end in pain.
A heart mourning the end of a beautiful time, or aching to finally go home.
Confusion and frustration at a career choice that is not for me, or excitement and anticipation to finally graduate and get moving.
All options will be beneficial. All will give me direction.

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This town is beautiful. We are made in the image of the Designer, and man has done well to use the creative capacities bestowed to him. It is a most frustrating thing to take a photograph of a place so breathtaking and have it reduced into a two-dimensional small frame. Pictures do it no justice. I want to scoop up the town in my hands and keep it forever, keep it for me and my children and my friends and family.

But Oxford is already mine.
The earth is mine. The earth is yours.
It is a gift, bestowed upon us by the only One who can breathe life into being. I do not need to covet the sea, the mountains, and the valleys. I do not need to squash a cathedral into a snow globe. I do not need to try to fit the wonder that fills my eyes into a 4x6 frame. I do not need to be riddled with the fear of losing a place that I love. It is already mine. All has been given to me and all has been given to you. We simply need to breathe, breathe in the beauty and breathe out the glory.