Snow Days

I wasn't sure what to say when The Farmer's Daughter suggested we make Snow Day posts. My snow days have been pretty lazy. I had already done all of my prep work for both of my jobs this coming week, and I don't have papers to grade. When the snow really started to fall, I was a bit upset because that meant I wouldn't get to use my lesson plans that I spent several hours putting together. And they were good this week. So when The Farmer's Daughter made the suggestion, I was not planning on following through because I didn't want to admit my laziness and I was bitter over the large amount of snow that caused school to be cancelled so many days.

Today though things are looking up. I still am here at the house and there's still a foot of snow covering the yard, but things are looking up. I could leave now if I wanted to do so. This morning I decided I was going to try to clear my driveway even if it took me all day...and it would have, especially once I discovered that there was no shovel to be found. Turns out, it's locked in the garage, which since I'm housesitting I have no access to. I spent about an hour with a broom and bucket clearing the short walk from the house to my car and the six inches right around my car.

Then a miracle happened. A neighbor came trudging across the yard and flagged down another neighbor with a tractor. As I type this, the tractor is clearing me a path out of the yard. I was envious of another neighbor who had someone on a tractor clearing his driveway while I was using a bucket and a broom, but now I'm a bit shameful of that envy. God provided me a tractor. I just had to do a bit of work myself.

You know, I think a lot of things in life are that way. Our selfish nature is to assume that things should be just given to us. I don't think that's how God always works though. Yes, some things, such as grace, are given to us freely even though we don't deserve it, but sometimes God wants us to get a bit dirty and sore first. That's what happened today. God wanted me to get out there and do some work myself before he sent along a tractor. The hard work made me even more thankful for the tractor, because my broom and bucket would have taken me a long, long time to clear that entire driveway.

This was taken sometime in the midst of the snow falling on Monday.

This was the last measurement I took. I'd say we got about a foot out here.

My efforts to clear a path with a broom and a bucket.

After the tractor made a couple of sweeps across the yard.

Hey Farmer's Daughter, I just saw my own sort of tractor pull! A tractor pulling snow!