Blended Thoughts

About a month ago a friend of mine challenged me to write a blog by the end of what was that week. I clearly didn’t complete that challenge on time but I’m thankful for it because without it I probably wouldn’t be writing this write now. I’ve been meaning to get back into blogging, but what are good intentions without action? I guess sometimes it takes being challenged to move towards what we want in our lives.

Its been about a year and a half since I wrote my last blog. One would think that after all this time, all the experiences that make up life, I’d be over-flowing with inspiration and ready to share all of the life lessons, breath taking moments, and profound insights I’ve experienced since my last key-board composition. But, alas here I sit wondering what direction to take this blank slate of a computer screen that sits before me.

I moved back to Colorado this last June to take a new job at the school I attend right out of highschool. Colorado I known for snow and while we’ve already had two snows this year, today is the first day that Colorado has truly opened its skies and let its first, heavy, unwavering snowfall come down, at least where I live. It’s been snowing since I woke up this morning and now as I sit at my desk, with the sun going down and the temperature getting colder, the snow continues to fall even harder.

I’ve always liked snow. Maybe it’s because of the fact that I’m from Minnesota and growing up a winter without snow was as odd as a seeing a street corner in Minneapolis without a Lutheran church. Today, however, the snow resounded with me on more than just a nostalgic level. Today, there was something reassuring about the ease in which the snow fell, and with steady and consistency blanketed the earth. It didn’t have to try to do that, it didn’t have to work for it, it just fell, each flake after another, and it was so peaceful, so graceful, and quite too.

Coming on staff at my new job has been very challenging. Nearly, every day I wake up and feel like the day is so much bigger than me, beyond my abilities and capacities. At the end of the day I often go to bed exhausted, feeling like I have nothing left to give. On the other hand, I love what I’m doing and find so much fulfillment in it  – in the relationships I’m building, in the classes I get to teach, in seeing students learn and grow, and the fact that I’m learning and growing because of them. However, it still remains that I feel like this job is beyond me; yet, I think that’s exactly how God would have it. If I felt like I had this job handled, that I could wake up every day and face it on my own, in my own strength and abilities, where would my need for God be? How would he fit into the picture? Just some convenient tagline to my day, a clever hashtag? Instead, everyday, sometimes what seems like every moment I’m having to turn to Him to ask for help. I feel like this year has been yet another year in helping, or forcing because of necessity, me to put into action all the head knowledge I have about God that I’ve been storing up my whole life. Its one thing to now something it’s another to live it and I’m learning very quickly that I can’t do this job or live this life with out all that God gives me. He is more than a God who just wants to help us he is a God who wants to do it all.

The reason the snow was so meaningful for me today was because it served as reminder to slow down, rest, and relax. And that’s exactly what I did - I made a coffee, went into my office and started to write. In that slowing down, in the pensiveness it resulted in, I was remind that God has got me and although this has been a crazy couple of months, and may get even crazier, he will continue to hold me, care for me, and sustain me. So, as the snow consistently and peacefully fell today so will God’s love consistently fall on us, pursuing us, asking us to live in the peace he offers.

“My grace is sufficient for you for my power is made perfect in weakness.” 2 Cor. 12:9