On Second Thought, Maybe this was a Good Day

Today was our first snow fall of the season: not a lot, just enough to say it snowed. The house feels cold, the sky is grey, and my children and I were exceptionally unmotivated to do much that required a great outlay of energy.

Some days are like that, and I'm ok with it.

And somehow this seems to fit with a little flash of insight I had when praying this morning. It fits with, or rather follows on from, the post I wrote yesterday.

It was after one of the most unscintillating times of prayer I've had in recent days that I had this thought about the value of reason as governor of my choices and actions. It fits with yesterday's post because so often in the midst of those intensely formative moments of experiencing God's calling me forward, when all the emotions and passions are getting riled up in me, those can get the upper hand. Even if it is the most intense emotion in the world that inspires me to say or act or commit to something, this is not automatically good unless it also conforms with reason. Reason asks questions like, "What does the moral law say about this? How is this going to affect the commitments I already have in place? Am I conveniently avoiding any truth, here?" and etc.

No, this isn't rocket science. But subjectively, if I were to always operate this way in the case of really riled up schnee* in me, it would be a huge movement of grace at work.


Because, you see, I have often tended to be ruled by my own impossibly high standards of perfection, all of which tend to grow out of or get wrapped around said soulish excess to the point where it seemed I didn't know who I was or what to do without requiring my soul to be puking out chaotic, pressure-filled demands.

This is how people get driven through life by ideology, or by ideology cloaked as theology or spirituality, which is probably far more toxic.

But today I thought, "I'm tired, it's cold, it's gray and snowy; we have these books to read, this outing to do. It's ok if I don't pushpushpush for a lot of unreasonable accomplishments and spend the day getting angry that we aren't all meeting some stupid, made-up, and impossible standard that says now our behavior is acceptable."

Yes. I like this. And I think my inkling is starting to unfurl.





*"Schnee," by the way, is a family word I borrowed from a co-worker many years ago, which basically means what it sounds like you are trying not to say.