Snow

I'm watching it snow.

I'm watching the small white flakes fall in flurries around the lampposts that make the quad look more and more like Narnia (which, from what I hear, is the place to be these days) under the White Witch before the Spring.

I'm watching it coat the ground with its new frozen blanket, something that three exams and a service had prevented me from seeing more than a month ago. The ground's been waiting on this all day, as a hush has fallen over the thickening sky, waiting for the time when it could spread delight in the form of soft crystals drifting from the sky.

I'm watching it slightly jealously as I think about how white it is. It's not fair, how the clean snow naturally falls from the sky to bless the earth in small portions. I watch it stay pure in places, covering up mulch and tree branches, and wonder why in so many little things I'm no longer white and why in so many big things I stand more silent than the snow, a greater sin than mixing with mud or being erased by frigid rain.

I'm watching it to avoid diving into reading and typing and working. Ah, snow, if you had come but one day sooner, I would have completed my assignments fully and not have had to face the sad yet guiltily encouraging fact that I can do a minimum amount of work and remain mediocre. Now you leave me to remember that mediocre is a large plain and that no one was created to remain mediocre forever.

I'm watching the rare flakes as the pseudo-storm lightens up and people stop running in happiness in the snow and begin running in agitation from the cold. I'm watching the friends bustled together outside the dorm across the quad and the lonely soul sitting by the lamppost, waiting. I'm watching the tracks they make in the snow, purposefully leaving their fleeting mark on this rarest of weather phenomena and suddenly I don't feel so bad. Sometimes a snowflake is just a snowflake.

And now I'm far away from it, looking at the fake snowflakes on my window and thinking about the things I should be doing. You know, one time, maybe it was Wednesday night, I was working on something and I looked at my prayer notebook and I wanted God. Not just to write something because I can do that any time. I wanted to talk, to tell Him about my world and to listen as He rebuilt it in the way that only He can. Is your heart supposed to hurt? What am I missing? I'm so tired, I want to sleep and I'm so broken, I want to live.

And it's not that I'm not happy and it's not that I don't have a wonderful, ridiculously blessed life. It's not that I can't see the snow falling anymore, it's just that I have to look to the light to see it illuminated and my eyes are tired. I forget that life is not a vast snow covered tundra where we are punished for making a dent in the whiteness. The best thing about snow is that you can play in it. How else are you going to make angels?