Ah, Winter...

Snow shmow. It's ice that creates the real drama. At least, on the roads. We have a most dependable 4x4 half-ton truck that may as well be named Hercules. It's been our ace in the hole a hundred times when our other cars have fallen lame against winter's harshest road conditions. When this is what greeted us first thing this morning, it was a no-brainer that Kev would take Hercules to work.

Yeah, it's icy, but we have Chevy Hercules, right?

... right?

I was shocked when Kev called a minute after he left to say that he was stuck in the driveway. He was broadside halfway to the road, just slid right into the snowbank in slow-mo and not a thing he could do about it.

Hauling kitty litter, ammonium sulfate (snow melter), gloves & jacket for Kev, I opted for a shortcut through the field of snow rather than skate my way to him. Good choice. In the meantime, he'd fetched chains from the barn to lay down for traction. Like he always does, morphing into a mighty combo of MacGyver and Jack Bauer, he unstuck the truck and took Jylle to school so she wouldn't have to gauge the roads by her first-ever-winter-driving self.

I snapped a few pictures of the innocent-looking puddles along the way. One would never guess that inches away from the traction of that snow, lays ice that would just as soon smack your grandma than just sit there and look pretty.

Watching the water splash into the melt of the puddles, I was reminded of Rob Bell's book Drops Like Stars. He writes of a four year-old boy who says over and over, "Stars, stars, stars..." as he stares out the window at the rain. His mother explains that he thinks the droplets look like stars in the instant that they explode onto the sidewalk.


Magic in the mundane. A melody in the caterwaul. Victory in the tumult. Peace in the battle. Joy in the tragedy. My God delights in the upside-down, the impossible, the moment alive. Be still and know that I AM GOD. All is well...