Snow Days

Every kid loves snow days. Waking up and seeing those fluffy white flakes falling filled us with excitement. We'd run downstairs and turn on the TV to watch the news - the only time it might say something we cared about. Inevitably, the alphabetical listings would be just past the name of our school, so we'd switch channels in the hope that one of the others would have better timing. Once we'd cycled through all of them, we'd eventually wind up sitting and waiting, figuring out in our heads if Lakeland school district came before or after Lake-Lehman.

Finally, we'd see those magic words scroll across the bottom of the screen: Lake-Lehman School District CANCELLED. Delight. Excitement. Bliss. Sure, it might mean an extra day of school at the end of the year, but that feels like years from now. And now we had a whole day just for us. We could sled, we could build, we could fight. It was ours to do with what we wanted. It was a change from the day-in day-out drudgery of life. It was a gift.

As you grow older, snow days lose that luster. We think about tomorrow, and what we'll have to make up. We think about the traffic and the shoveling and the ice and the salt. Gone is the child-like wonder. Instead of thinking of the day as a gift, it becomes a burden.

When we are young, we know how to have fun. We know how to live in the moment. We know we were made to play and we jump at the chance. As we grow up, responsibility sets in and starts to take over. We lose touch with that playful innocence, we drift from the wonder and from living in the moment.

We were created with a purpose. Each day when we wake up there is possibility. This might be a day where I get to be who I was created to be. This might be a day where I can do what I was created to do. The signs will be less subtle than fluffy white flakes falling from the sky and no one will announce it on the news, but with God the possibility exists. The excitement is up to us.