and then the ice

I lay awake from midnight to three am listening to the ice fall out of the sky. It thunked down, bouncing and pinging. I'm sure if I was up in a fancy ski lodge with a cup of fortified cocoa and an elegant pair of woolen socks I would have thought it was pristine and mesmerizing.

Lying awake half the night listening to it and fretting about all the work you're going to have to do tired--when the weak winter sun finally drags is sorry self up to the cloud line, not to shine but to make all the darkness gray with dawn--is not so romantic.

The sunroom floor is covered in snow suits half dry and now very cold. Somehow they all have to be put away and some pies made and the table extended. There's a bunch of other stuff too but listing it will just make me more fretful.

The children won't probably want to go out today even though they did have fun yesterday. At first. But then Elphine ticked everybody off by trying to control the snowball fight. She worked herself into an angry froth and then spread it around to everyone else.

I'm pretty sure I do the same thing all the time but I'm a little more subtle about it. I make everyone bend to my will, usually in the matter of cleaning up on Saturdays before Sundays, and give everyone a bad time. It's very likely I will fall into the same pit today. "We have to get ready for Thanksgiving!" I'll bark and snarl and whine. "You know, the one day of the year when we have to be thankful! Now clean up so I can feel thankful!" 

I might not say it exactly like that. Maybe I'll be self controlled and loving all day like a good mother would. You know, all those other good mothers out there. All those ones on the internet. The same internet that is both flinging itself into fits of encouraging, nay, commanding me to tap into that deep well of thankfulness that should abide in some part of every human soul, but is also, the internet that is, advertising to me so that I will be dissatisfied with everything I have. Which is it, oh internet world? Shall I buy or throw away? Shall I be satisfied or fuss? Shall I eat carbs or eschew them?

Neither, I think. Don't think I'm going to take my cue from the interwebs today. St. John told me just now One, that perfect love casts out fear and Two, that He who is in me is greater than he who is in the world, and I think we can safely lump The Internet into the category of The World. It is only the alien love of Jesus, the perfecting, life giving love of God that can bring about any gratitude from any place-- that place being not the jumbled sinful well of my own heart but from his own self. But don't worry, tomorrow I'll probably still post the 365 things I'm most thankful for. It's a useful exercise. Maybe, as a working out my way toward the perfect life giving mind of Christ, I will even include the snow. But don't even mention the ice. That is never making it onto the list.