I’m kind of obsessed with grace these days. I am blaming it on Anne Lamott. She makes me think of this all the time as I read her stuff and as I think about the ideas she has shared over the years. I wonder if there are similarly gifted writers who focus on serendipitous gifts. Now I’ve become a seeker, looking for the grace that underpins each day. It is there somewhere if I have the perseverance to search for it.

Looking out the window it takes a bit of a stretch of imagination to see the beauty and gift of ice all over everything. The dripping, cold stuff falling from the sky isn’t rain, isn’t snow, isn’t sleet, isn’t quite anything. I guess the closest thing is slush. Depending on where it hit it becomes. The upper limbs of the bushes and trees are coated with this crystalline coat of heavy ice. I fear the weight will break them. Gutters have ice dripping out of them and the backup of the continued fall may bring them off the houses. The layer of ice on the ground is too terrifying to contemplate. But tomorrow will be school, probably a 2 hour delay because it is supposed to be above freezing all night, which it isn’t now.

I suspect grace is all about perspective. 10 years ago a 2 hour delay of school would have been a blessing to a teacher. 10 years ago a 2 hour delay of school would have been a curse for a parent without someone to take and deliver kids. Usually the bus comes at 6:20 but now you got yourself and them up and have 2 hours to “kill.” Grace might be all of you making a real breakfast together. It might be letting one of the kids read to you. It might be letting them go back to bed and you get to do more on the work due when you get in. How tricky it is to anticipate grace.

At this moment it is not having to make excuses for not going out, not having to say it scares me to drive. Right now we have toilet paper, bread and milk. Now it is feeling secure that even if it isn’t clear tomorrow it will be the next day and I will be with the kids at school, be able to get and buy more toilet paper, bread, and milk. How fortunate I am to live now. How fortunate I live here where all those options are available.

I’m enjoying the pinging of the ice on the window, like a small wind chime. I can write and enjoy the storm without worry. I sometimes lie in my bed at night and listen to rain thinking about living in a cave, a thatched roof home, an animal skin tent and how they lived with rain that seeps into, under, and over just about anything. Even tent camping 10-15 years ago when it rained at least I’d count on the underside of the tent getting wet. How did people live their lives knowing this icy rain would seep into their lives and there was nothing they could do to stay dry or warm? How is this thought not a chance to see grace? Finding the balance between wet and dry, warm and cold really is hard when you haven’t discovered plumbing, home heating, and tile roofs? Now wonder the Romans were so clever. I am glad I waited to be born until I was.