Caught in the Moment

It snowed today.  I was on break from class and wandering campus thinking, praying and worrying.  Thinking about words my wife had said the night before.  “Why can’t something go right for us, just once????  Why can’t we have something that gives us just a little hope????”  She said it so much more eloquently, but her words encompassed the feelings I’d had for the last 6-8 months.  Last night had been  a late night and today an early morning of wrestling with choices in our adoption process that are gut –wrenching.  “God, couldn’t you give us just a little hope?  Couldn’t you give us some sign that things will turn out OK, that you truly ARE working all things for our good?  Because right now it doesn’t feel like it.” 

We have glorious times with Bella that cannot escape the looming shadow of her impending departure.  She giggles with full belly laughs that are a delight to the ears as we hide our tears behind forced smiles and hidden sorrow.  She’s too young to perceive that we are trying to protect her.  Or are we trying to protect ourselves? 

Then, today, as it was snowing, I was brought a measure of comfort.  At first there was a flake here and there, wisping and wandering through the air.  Without any wind they seemed to dance all around me, calling my eyes heavenward and away from my thoughts.  Bigger and loftier flakes began to fall until I was in a snow globe of emotions.  I began to remember simpler times.  Times as a boy in Ohio laying on our front lawn looking up and letting the cold flecks touch my face and melt.  Times with loved ones, my brothers, Erika, my niece and nephew and how the snow seemed to change how we interacted with one another.  Times when my biggest worry was the paragraph I had forgotten to write for my high school American Lit. class.  Was life really that much simpler, easy, pure, or was I just remembering it as such?  At the time I remember the stress of life as being greater than what I thought I could handle.  It took faith in His hands and plan and sovereignty in this world to overcome those pressures.  Had life really changed that much?  The decisions are greater, have greater importance, seem more complex, but am I not a more mature, stronger man through the years?  More importantly, has HE not shown Himself faithful through all the trails and hardships?  So then, can I not trust Him that much more? 

The snow was coming down now in an onslaught of white.  The bell had rung, students had gone inside and class had begun again.  Yet there I was breathing it all in.  Trying to make the moment last.  Trying to remember and forget all at the same time.  My Norman Rockwell moment would soon pass, but then, for just a moment, hope sprang into my heart again.  It is impossible to rush about and be so concerned with the weightiness of life when a slow snowfall alights on your world.  For the moment, our decisions did not seem so momentous.  For the moment, I was living in the moment.  Not in the past where regret and what ifs and what could- have- beens survive.  Not in the future where worry, doubt and fear exist.  That moment I was there, present in the present.  And it is in the present that hope can exist.  In the present, I am realizing that I can enjoy the moments that I have with my daughter.  It is in the present that I can truly live.  The key in this though, is to trust His plan for our future and His provision for our past, Christ Himself.  Upon these truths, I can live in the present.  A gentle snow fell today and it was glorious.