Snow Blower or Footprints. Whichever.

With a steel-tipped shovel I scrape the pavement behind my parked car. It's early in the morning and probably in the single digits fahrenheit. Beneath my coat and fleece, I'm sweating and enjoying the hard work; it reminds me that I have muscle for a reason. In fact, my shoulders and chest are still tight from yesterday's shoveling. But it snowed again last night - four inches. My task this morning is to shovel the fresh snow out of the way, so our heavy cars won't pack it down into ice, bonding a slippery path to our uphill driveway.

I shovel hard, but despite my persistence, icy tire tracks still cling to the pavement. I know they need to be removed, but I've been out here for almost an hour. My shoulders, chest, and hands are getting sore and my face is becoming numb from the cold. I push the majority of the loose snow off to the
side and call it a morning.

This afternoon I had lunch with a group of pastors at a local restaurant. We gathered in table groups to talk about the ways that God is leading us in our own personal lives, as opposed to the conversation-per-usual: our congregation, programs, ideas, and strategies. But not a minute had gone by before our table was talking about our churches again. What church we work at, what programs we've tried, our complaints about supervisors, how we wish things were different. I understand it's hard, working at church, to not talk about work. It's hard work to talk about yourself, to be vulnerable and exposed. So we find ourselves running back over our old churchy patterns.

If we park our cars in the same spot, we'll have packed ice in the same places. Eventually, the ice will be too thick to scrape up and we either need a different shovel* or we need to park our cars in new spots. Or both.

As I pulled up our driveway (packing down a fresh layer of ice), Rachel and our neighbor, Sandy, were headed toward me. They were all bundled up for a walk together, chuckling, talking, and leaving fresh footprints in the soft powder of our driveway.

Wow. Now that's what I'm talking about.



*or a snowblower! Here I am with my dinky little shovel and my seventy-year-old neighbor, Sandy, has a badass snowblower. When I first started shoveling I almost shoveled her driveway too. "She's a poor old lady," I thought. Psh - forget about it! I need HER help!