Yesterday, I labored to remove the soaked shove-off from the city plow. I missed out on completing the errands I’d planned. This morning, I slid sideways down my driveway.

Once I righted the car and went on my way, the sun slanted through the trees, illuminating the white lines traced along the branches of the forest. Intersecting angles everywhere there weren’t mounds of snow hulking in the foreground. Pine boughs bent in supplication. As I traveled this snowy tunnel, I wondered whether I hadn’t been transported to Vermont while I slept. It was truly a winter wonderland.

Overcome by the beauty, I realized that a snowstorm, the resultant ice, and the resulting snafus in our daily schedule wouldn’t be such an issue if we weren’t trying to sublimate nature to our will. If I accept the fact that I need all-wheel drive and a fair amount of ice melt to enter or exit my driveway, I won’t be as frustrated the next time it snows. If I expect to drive slowly and downshift through the gears to slow rather than jamming on the brakes, I will be able to marvel at the sublime scene all around me.

And just like that, God sneaked up on me again.

Much the same way I’d be able to see the beauty in a winter snowstorm if I laced up my hiking boots and moved through the forest unencumbered by wheels and sheet metal, if I didn’t spin my wheels trying to navigate a path God never intended for me to take, life would flow more smoothly. Be more meaningful. More fulfilling. Though it may not be in ways I ever anticipated. That caution and care, that easy-going spirit would allow me to bend, but not break, just like the tree branches bowing to the ground. Accepting my circumstances as they are would allow me to see the value in what is rather than languishing about what might have been.

Photo: Jennifer Butler Basile