'Sno Problem
by Ana Braga-Henebry in Faith on Tuesday, March 23, 2010 6:00 AM
I usually turn my oven to auto-clean on Ash Wednesday, so the acrid smell of those spills and who-knows-what turning into ashes provides a very physical reminder to us of the liturgical season that is about to begin.
Not this year. Let’s say it would have been over-the-top. One needs to just glance out of the window to sense the physicality of this Lent: a frozen Lent, buried in 20 inches of snow that spread far and wide around our acreage in three hundred and sixty degrees of what looks life a frozen wasteland.
And then the other day a local friend, who loves winter I must add, mentioned that her husband is ready for winter to give way. It came to my mind that her husband is from a southern state. Her husband is ready for spring, I thought ... and then I wanted to shout that I too was ready, not for spring but for-goodness-sake bring me summer! I am not from a southern state, where they are still vulnerable to an occasional snow—I grew up in a tropical country in the southern hemisphere where snow is the stuff of fantasy, otherworldliness!
Snow is not so bad: I like to believe that snow is the gift from God that makes winter bearable: it is beautiful and it brings Light when light is oh-so-needed as the days have so little of it. Add the delight it brings to the outside activities. Think of a winter such as this one without snow. No, let’s not.
I am asked the same question repeatedly: How do I endure the harsh, brutally cold South Dakota winters? How can I stand it? In every instance, I am surprised I am asked that.
I just do it, like we all endure the lot given to us in this vale of tears.
“Enduring the lot given to us in our vale of tears” can sound down-hearted and pessimistic, but it really isn’t. On the contrary. I learned this wisdom at home from my father who generously distributed eloquent metaphors during my childhood years at the family table. And yet my father then was one of sunniest people you could meet, filling his and others’ day with happy activities, laughter, and joy.
What he taught us, repeatedly, was that the human condition, after the Fall of Man, is our vale of tears, inescapable and inexorable. In this tearful valley, however, we are to work towards Him, and we are able through his Love to experience bits of heaven in this time on earth ... all bathed in the joy that can only come from Him. Immersed in this Hope, we learned that with Him and in Him we can uplift Man from his plight into the sweetness of a heavenly kingdom, still here in this life. We more than heard it: we saw our mother and father doing it, day by day, in their own vale of tears, with smiles on their faces.
Do I have a choice to endure or not this brutally cold winter, that finally, in Lent, gives signs of passing on? No. My husband’s work is here and it is here that our family learns and grows. The choice of leaving this winter is not one I contemplate.
Is it hard? Yes, undoubtedly. But my freedom, God-given, to not only accept it but make the best out of it, is empowering and fruitful, as with any step we make towards Him.
We shovel through the drifts, we turn up the heat, and we make jokes about it. We notice all of the colors snow is made of, much beyond white: especially the gorgeous golds and blues, at the end of the afternoon, as we drive back from town through the fields, home to our acreage. We use the dream and anticipation of spring and summer as a propeller for home projects, and we drink gallons of hot-chocolate during snowed-in days.
I hope Easter will find us snow-free. I know it is a grand hope judging from the amount of snow still on the ground. Nevertheless, I hope, foolish as it may sound.
Life in this vale of tears, as my father showed by his life example, is dotted with bits of the Kingdom, bright as heavenly jewels, which appear in unexpected places—and that is directly proportional to how often we use our God-given freedom to choose Him.
Not to say I don’t also dream of snow-free living ... even as my teenaged boys leave, snow gear in tow, for their job at the local ski area.
— Ana Braga-Henebry has a Masters Degree in Humanities from the University of Texas at Dallas. She has written myriad articles for Catholic homeschool periodicals, has been writing book reviews for over ten years, and blogs from the family acreage in South Dakota.
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