The assignment: go out and find truth. Truth can be found anywhere if one just takes the time to look. God never ceases to amaze me with his creation. The heavens declare the glory of God, the skies and the earth proclaim the work of his hands. You never really notice how much one walk can clear your head. With no purpose other than to wander, which was our assignment. When we walk around on a normal day it is for a purpose, to get to a certain destination. We have interruptions from our phone to other people to what we are going to do next. With an empty mind and 20 uninterrupted minutes, you notice the small moments that bring you joy. A smile will brush across your face when someone greets you, or the wind sends a chill up your spine, or a small squirrel finds his way up a tree, or you notice all the little beautiful limbs on the snowed tipped tree you never took the time to notice before.
Truth. The truth is walking on a sidewalk at noon on a cold February day after a nice snow. The truth is in the snow. It's so crisp and perfectly laid out over the grass and the sidewalks. It is an image of perfection and untouched beauty, mesmerizing really. But the thing about the snow I have known since I was little is that if you want to get anywhere you have to go through it. In elementary school, to build a snowman, I would try to walk in the same footprints my brother had made so that the whole backyard was not covered in footprints. The fact of the matter is, snow is never the same as when you wake up at 5 a.m. before the streets are cleaned and kids have played and parents drove off to work. From a footprint to a snow plow to tire mark to the suns heat the snow is delicate. I think that this principle can be applied to life. Once something is done, it cannot be undone. That sounds like common sense. But if you really think about it deeper, it is everything.
In life we are going to makes mistakes, experience adventure and hardship and love and the mundane, but each thing we do and go through leaves a footprint on us. It may not be lasting, the snow may drift and cover it up with time, but it does change you in a small way. And each footprint happens for a reason.
We’ve established that snow is beautifully breathtaking when you wake up. But, if you do not go experience life while leaving a few footprints behind, you will be stuck inside staring out the window your whole life. There is beauty and stories behind the snow that has tracks in a million different directions as well.
In life, you have to be willing to be hurt, to fall in love, to see a new place, to learn something new. Because those are the footprints and tracks and plows that make you who you are. The untouched perfect snow is an illusion that can only last so long.
No one wants to look back on their life and see a pristine blank white slate. Fill your life with color and messiness. I promise there will be something absolutely beautiful to come from it. In just 20 short minutes of clearing my mind in God’s beautiful creation I realized the simple fact that, “once something is done it can’t be undone.” And that isn’t so bad.
So, I stepped in the snow…