Merridee’s is slow this morning. Must be the weather. After a week of spring warmth we’re back to clouds and cold, at least for a day or so. I reluctantly put the top back on my Jeep this morning but let the windows off in case the weatherman was wrong. I just had some coffee with an old friend that I go to church with. It’s hard to believe that I’m old enough to say “old friend”. Cameron, my brother-in-law, is with me this morning. He and Shantel, Jennifer’s sister, and their three kids are in town from St Louis to attend the birth of our newest nephew. Jannell, Jennifer’s other sister, the pregnant one, is scheduled for a c-section tomorrow afternoon (Tuesday). Cameron has brought his PC into an entirely MAC environment and has thrown off the entire ecosystem of Merridee’s. Fortunately there is another guy sitting between us and nobody can tell Cameron is with me. I offered to let him put an Apple sticker on his laptop this morning so he wouldn’t draw attention to himself but he refused.

This morning I read about rest in my prayer book. It was good and I was going to write to you about it. Then I found this poem and thought it said things better than anything I could say. I put my little diddy after the poem if you still feel like reading it.

LIGHTENING THE LOAD

The first thing we have to do
is to notice 
that we’ve loaded down this camel

with so much baggage

we’ll never get through the desert alive.

Something has to go.

Then we can begin to dump
the thousand things

we’ve brought along

until even the camel has to go

and we’re walking barefoot

on the desert sand.

There’s no telling what will happen then.

But I’ve heard that someone,

walking in this way,

has seen a burning bush.

– Francis Dorff, O. Praem.

The scripture for the day was from James 1, the verse about sin being conceived and then growing up into death. My busyness outside of God’s plan, and ignoring Sabbath principles, may be conceived in what seems like innocence, and may even be admired as a strong work ethic. But, if it is born out of vanity and selfish motives, and this work “succeeds”, eventually it grows up to be bigger than life, spinning out of control, consuming me. And when it is fully-grown, and I have given myself over to this pattern of work and I can’t escape it, something in me dies.

On that note-
Rest and blessings,
Jeromy

Hutch is at the bakery with me this morning. School was canceled again today because of the snow and he’s literally bored to tears. We took a walk through the woods yesterday but that wasn’t nearly enough stimulation. I make fun of southerners and their overreaction to winter weather but this time the snow is pretty legitimat, and it’s stuck around for a while. I’ve been told that Williamson County (where we live) has got one (1) snow plow which is why all but the interstate remains covered with snow and ice. I have a Jeep so we’re getting around ok. The Jeep makes me feel powerful, like a superhero.

On Saturday, the morning after the storm, we went out for breakfast and tried to find a sled, but all the stores have already stopped stocking them, so we headed over to the Ingrim’s for a visit. Jason and Culley are in our community group and their daughters are the same age as our kids. They live on a seven-acre hill in Franklin and have a great sledding slope. They’d been literally snowed-in and were glad for the company. Their sledding hill began from their front door and they had a sled to we gave it a go. The thin layer of ice made for a perfect surface and in about 20 seconds you could be at the bottom of the hill. Jennifer watched me take the hill and couldn’t resist. She jumped on head-first and pushed off. We watched as she got smaller and smaller and wrecked legs over head at the end of the run. What we couldn’t see from the top of the hill was that, in her attempt to stop the sled before sliding into the sewer drain, Jennifer pushed down on the front of the sled breaking through the quarter-inch layer of ice she was sliding on. When she did the sled stopped but her face didn’t. All of her forward momentum was directed into the ice, her forehead leading the way. From the front porch it appeared that Jennifer popped up unfazed, but as she made her way up the hill it became clear that something bad had happened in the wreck. When Jennifer was about 100 feet from the house we could see blood and the closer she got the worse the carnage became. The ice had carved a curved line in Jennifer’s face from the center of her forehead to just below her left cheekbone and the sharp little shards of ice that implanted themselves into her skin were melting into little red spots. Her eye was already beginning to show a bruise. Our first reaction was surprise, then Jason said “Quick, get the camera.” He wanted to be sure to document the event. Cully took Jennifer inside and cleaned her up a little and we decided we should all quit while we were still alive.

Jennifer is recovering well. She’s still beautiful even with a bruised face.

Stay warm,
Jeromy