Winter!

Post written by Pete Strub.

To me winter means three months without sunlight. Three months of driveway shoveling. Three months of double-long commutes. Three months of wondering whether this will be the day I drive into a ditch for the third time (What? You haven’t done that before?). Three months of bulky winter coats. Three months of salt marks on my shoes. Three months of our dog Monty dragging me like a dogsled through the snow on walks. Three months without my bike or my running shoes. Three months of chapped lips. Three months of depression. In short, I’m not a big fan of winter. If it wasn’t for people around here that I really love and like, I’d be out of Rochester. I would move to the south and spend Christmas on the beach. I know that some of you probably look forward to the winter and cherish such things as snowmobiling, skiing, or snowboarding. Personally, these are all sports I could do without. If I have to dress like an Eskimo to do something, there is no way it can be fun. If I was sure that global warming had the potential to eliminate winter, I would buy a Hummer and spray aerosol like it’s the 80’s. There are, however, exactly two good things about winter. The first is snow days. As a teacher, I get to stay home on snow days – this is ridiculously awesome. The second good thing about winter happened to me today for the first time.

Getting on the road on the way home from work today, it was clear that it was not going to be a normal drive home. Usually my drive home from school is my own personal NASCAR race, but in the snow I turn into an elderly woman. This evening, the roads were bad enough that just about everyone had gone into grandmother mode (no offense grandmothers). It took me forty-five minutes to make a drive that normally takes me eighteen minutes. And this, believe it or not, is the other thing that I really like about winter. A couple of times each winter, the weather is bad enough, that everybody’s plans get wrecked and everything slows down or comes to a stop. I look forward to these days. We all know that we move too fast in our world, but very few of us will take the initiative to slow down on our own. These bad weather days feel like a reminder that there are bigger and more powerful things than our busy schedules and to-do lists. I think that God loves these days, too. We are forced to be slow, be still, and peel back the layers busyness and stress. The only way we can mess up these wonderful days is to fight the slow-down. I suggest we just succumb to the slowness, give up our to-do lists, and enjoy. Or we could all move down south…

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!