“‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ says the Lord…”
The snow came in last week. Giant, amazingly beautiful, perfect, intricately formed snowflakes fell like parachutes straight from the sky. It covered the ground overnight and fell for days following, closing the schools, causing people to abandon their cars in ditches, on freeways, bridges, and off-ramps because of black ice. My family stayed tucked away in our corner of the world.
Each snowflake was like a world within itself, a story complete with beginning, middle, and end. I marveled at the snow as I watched it fall – the way it deadened the sounds of the world, the way everything became brilliant and peaceful in the very same instant. Loving that the same hands that created the enormity of the universe also created these tiny, similarly intricate snowflakes falling so softly before my eyes. If the numbers of hairs on my head are numbered by Him, surely these wondrous flakes were numbered as well. He has a plan, He has a plan.
“‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ says the Lord, ‘plans to help you and not harm you..’”
A few days prior, I had made the difficult decision to cut back on my medication due to side effects, and by the time the day before Thanksgiving rolled around, I was a bit of a mess. Dark, heart rending dreams and thoughts had followed me for three nights and days, and by the time morning came I was in such a despairing mood that upon hugging my mother, the dam broke loose and my tired heart turned to salt water in the comfort of her tiny arms.
I stayed fairly catatonic the rest of the day, hating myself and my treacherous thoughts for every moment of it, and the worry I feared I was the constant cause for in the hearts of loved ones.
We supported each other through the next day, Thanksgiving, stealthily watching each other for silent mood indicators, teasing, cajoling, and cautiously acting as human barriers to the others’ thoughts and worries. Each joke was just a hair loud. Each smile was just a bit bright, glaring off the snow through the windows.
This was my first “white” Thanksgiving, and this was the first Thanksgiving where my mom and I did the cooking together, which was a new tradition that I hope to continue. We used to spend every year driving to our enormous extended family in California, but now – for the first time in over ten years, it was just us, in our own home.
I missed them. I smiled.
The days passed and brought me to this one, which I spent in the presence of the youth of my new church, repeating old California traditions, trying to make them feel natural here. It reminded me of those I used to spend Sundays with, years ago, for all the years leading up to this one. I thought of where they all were now, and how this life had cast us in a million directions, away from each other. I thought of the days when we’d wander through the hills in the sun, making stupid movies that were only funny to us.
“I miss the warmth, and I miss the sun.. I miss the ocean, I miss everyone…”
“‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ says the Lord, ‘plans to help you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future.’”
Lately, I’ve been repeating this verse in my head like a mantra, letting it saturate my brain over the span of weeks and weeks. It hangs within a tiny gold heart around my neck, close enough to whisper to my own beneath my skin.
When my house was finally empty tonight, I settled in to distract myself from the distant phantom echoes that were almost loud enough to hear, the ones that caused my heart to contract tightly with each beat.
“I miss the bridges that span across the bay..tonight, it seems like ages ago.”
And then another missile was launched, another blow inadvertently aimed at those I hold most dear, and for this reason – my heart aches this night with an ache like fire, and wishes beyond all wishes that it could do something to take someone else’s pain. The walls of this house fairly thrum with that pain tonight, and I sit here helpless, keeping my cold fingers moving over a keyboard so that I don’t quite yet have to face the idea of sleep.
Are they sleeping? I hope so. I doubt it.
“Like a million parachutes, the snow still falls – The dogs are asleep now, there’s no one to call.”
Futures have a way of seeming very dim at times from our human perspective, I know this. It’s like a perfect snowflake newly formed on a mission towards the ground, wondering which snowflake it will land next to out of the thousands lying together as a blanket of white. God knows where it will land. God knows where we will too.
There is a plan.
“‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ says the Lord, ‘plans to help you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future.’”
Say it until you believe it too.
*Jer 29:11
**Sixpence None the Richer
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