The Story of Your Life in Hard Times

If I were a bear

And a big bear too,

I shouldn't much care

If it froze or snew;

I shouldn't much mind

If it snowed or friz -

I'd be all fur-lined

With a coat like his.

- Winnie the Pooh, "Fuzzy Bear"

The sky is falling on us.

I am trying to imagine it getting any worse, so I will feel better. Snow began yesterday afternoon. We awoke in the dark early this morning to the generator. The world outside is sheathed in ice. Our forecast calls for freezing rain all day, followed by snow tomorrow.

This storm is the latest in a series of them, pummeling us, one after another. The snow and ice are falling onto the foot of it that fell last weekend. It ends late Saturday. Then another is scheduled to arrive on Tuesday.

Our ice age has begun, and we were sleeping. We brought little to no winter clothing with us. We expected a southern climate. Instead, just 20 minutes from South Carolina, we find ourselves in the northern heights.

Now we shall see the stuff of which we are made. These are the times that try us and shape us, even as we shape them. It's easy to feel powerless against forces like this. But even here, it isn't true.

Our choices propel our story. Our choices help write the life we live. It's as though God made our world and made us and put us in it, saying, Go make a story. Go make a life, a little story inside my great story.

I think he's pleased with what he made. And he's pleased with what we make. Even if we aren't doing it all that well, even if we stumble and make mistakes, even if we are sometimes foolish, he watches us as delightedly as a young father watches his infant try to take the first step.

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What choices are you making to help write the story of your life?

Photograph, copyright 2010 by Benjamin Frear.