Dry Snow

Spiritually dry.  Wanting so bad to feel the presence of God but not knowing how to get there.  As I drove along I90 I thought about other times when I had spent that same 2+ hour drive singing and praising the whole way.  I thought speaking the praise out loud might help so I tried. "You made this beautiful day!  Look at the clouds, the snow capped mountains..."  I spoke the words out loud in the car.  It was nice to realize those things but flat.  What was wrong with me that this dry spell was going on so long?  Where was God?  What was I supposed to be learning? What was I doing wrong?
Almost to Butte, I found myself in the middle of a snow storm. After a brief stop in town I tried to head over the mountain toward home.  The road was closed.  Semi's jack-knifed on the top.  I wanted to be home so I chose to drive the "old road."  The two-way was narrow and windy but it was often better because they kept it plowed and sanded for the people who lived along that  pass.  At first it was only wet but as I traveled on, the snow was sticking and it was slick.  I went slow.  A few other cars were behind.  The twists and turns over the mountain had potential for danger.  I don't know when I began singing - praise songs.  They came from deep within me, peaceful and strong. Came from somewhere I felt no ownership for.  They came as an answer to prayer, A spring of water for my dry soul.  I sang until the road was only wet again.  Then I drove on in silence, rested, peaceful and assured.

I knew she was nervous.  Her legs beneath her short "mother of the groom" dress were shaking even as she began singing.  She wanted to do so well.  "All of me loves all of you."  Her voice was so lovely, just right for this song.  Compassion welled within me as I thought of the emotions I had also felt as a mother at my son's wedding. Maybe a third of the way through the song she stopped.  Right in the middle of the wedding she stopped.  "Could we start this over?" she spoke back to the man who was working the background music.  She was embarrassed but firm. And so she began again and as she did her son, the groom, came over, leaving his bride, slipping his arm around her waist, holding her firmly.  She sang on now, strong and beautiful.  Realizing his bride was standing alone, Ty turned to her, held out his hand for Chloe too join them.  They stood together, the three of them, his arms around his mother and his new bride.  The song was long but I didn't want it to end.  This moment, so precious, so symbolic, so perfect in it's imperfection.  I supposed there were many wet eyes at the tender love of a son for his nervous Mom and the righteousness of that same son whose awareness of his abandoned bride brought the three of them standing as one before this captivated wedding crowd.
"It was the best part of the wedding," I told his mother later.  She smiled.
It wasn't until several months later that I heard "the rest of the story."  Sitting together at a wrestling match for our shared grandson she shared that she was singing the next day in a contest.    Reminded of the wedding incident I again expressed my love of that wedding moment.  "Well, actually, you'll have to know the rest of the story," she shared.  "That morning on the way to the wedding I was so nervous.  I don't ask God for little things.  I figure He's got enough big things to worry about.  But that day I asked God, 'Could you just put Your arm around my waist?'  I knew I needed some support.  It wasn't until I was running the next day that I realized what God had done for me. I hadn't put it together until then. God had done just that."