Unpredictable

Snow. First they said "some", then "up to 10 inches", then at 4:30 this morning my NOAA All Hazards weather radio went off to "alert" me to a "Winter Storm Warning", now they're calling for 6-8" plus ice on top.... in other words, the forecasters have no idea what is going to happen, other than there is some cold air and some less cold air and lots of precip! The rest is up to your trusty "weather rock".

Life is unpredictable too. I was just musing with an old friend that it seems that some of us are destined to always be "1 minute late for the bus". She and her husband have worked hard, struggled, and been awesome parents. They are well educated and hold advanced degrees with "honors" but they still struggle to make ends meet. It seems that every time they turn around something happens to knock them on their "butt-ocks" again. The same with another close friend... she had a rough start being a divorced mom to 4 kids by the time she was 24 years old(yes, all by the same alcoholic husband). She too worked hard, got an eduation and managed to raise 4 loving and intelligent children on her own. Finally, "things turned around" or so it seemed, and she met and married her true "soulmate". She said meeting him felt like "coming home". Finally, instead of one income she would have TWO and she could start getting on stable footing. Then she blew out her back while caring for a patient. Years later, still out of work and fighting denial after denial of disability (when she would rather work, but lives in chronic, severe pain). IT JUST ISN'T FAIR!

I look back on my life and think of the things that "might have been"... the "what if's".... How difficult it is for us to see our lives from the BIG perspective when all we see is the path behind us and immediately in front of us.

Sometimes I feel like the children in C. S. Lewis' book The Silver Chair. They are stumbling across a foggy, dark, misty, cold, shadowy place and encounter great sheer cliffs and precupices that seem random and quite odd. At one point the children find themselves in a rift-like place. They follow it straight and find a path leading off to the right which soon dead-ends. They backtrack and follow the path again only to find a sharp right turn in the path as their only choice. Another dead end. While they are warmer there in the rift (sheltered from the howling wind and mist), it simply leads to nowhere. They must climb out, and continue to forge their way across the mysterious land in the cold and dark, not seeing where they are going. It is only when they wake up later, in the home of the giants that live on the other side of the wasteland, that they can look down from above and see that the place that they were lost was an enormous letter "E" and part of a sign sent by Aslan as part of their quest.

Right now, I may be living in that "E"... or simply walking through it on my way across this life. But I do believe that someday I'll see things from a vantage point that will allow it all to make sense and I will see how each dead-end and each valley played a part in the purpose I was chosen to fulfill on this earth. I Corinthians 13:12 says it like this: "For now we see things in a glass, darkly; but then face to face........ now my knowledge is in part; then it will be complete, even as God's knowledge of me."

I'm just trying to walk in obedience with my eyes fixed on the One who sent me. Love, Claudia