Just Lyin' in the Snow on a Summer's Day... Lookin' Up at Jesus

Not to start with a buzz kill or anything, but life is really hard.

No, seriously.

If someone disagrees, it's highly possible they either: A. have a lousy memory; B. the hard stuff hasn't hit yet; or C. maybe they're fibbing.

The longer I live, the more in awe I am of pretty much everybody. I watch people walking with arms full of groceries on a sidewalk, and I wonder how far from home they are, admiring this simple yet hard thing.

I see someone who's no more ripped than I am walking in the morning as I hobble out for my own walk and think, "Way to go! Way to do battle with yourself - way to win today!"

I don't know why, but the grocery store has me watching young mothers with little children, and elderly couples, clinging to each other and the grocery cart for dear life. I find myself saying little prayers for them: "Father, please bless them today. Help them feel Your love, and give them the strength to do their stuff today."

Everyone I know is currently carrying a load nearly too heavy to bear. I've decided it's highly possible that when we leave this life and put down the grueling burden of opposition, it will stagger us how much we were pushing daily against it.

Many years ago, I had a conversation with a dear friend about becoming perfect. This was sometime in the quixotic years of my 20's or 30's when the illusion of achieving perfection in this lifetime was just starting to slip away. I was in the throes of early motherhood, had recently set aside the career I had planned since childhood, and spent much of my time bemused and bewildered at how I had gotten to this place.

On this particular day, something like this tumbled out of my mouth as Dear Friend and I - henceforth in this post to be referred to as DF - strove to solve the problems of the universe.

"I think I'm starting to think that God knows we can't achieve perfection in this life, so when He asks us to be perfect, He's asking us to make a perfect effort."

DF balked even at this. She made the most excellent point that perfect effort was every bit the sliding scale on any given day that perfect performance was. Touché.

Meanwhile, life just kept happening. Some of it was brutal. Some of it was glorious and sweet - the foretaste of joy C.S. Lewis writes about so wistfully.

Then one particularly bleak day, life found our fair heroine down for the count. I can't even remember the set of circumstances that laid me out, but on this day, I pictured myself as a handcart pioneer, trudging uphill in the snow (of course, uphill in the snow - the only way I ever walked to school as a child, right?), completely spent and unable to take another step.

On this particular day I couldn't even put one foot in front of the other to push that dang handcart. I was face planted in the snow, unable to get up. I begged Father to give me the strength to keep going, even just one more step, and praise Him forever - He did.

Shortly after that, I had another conversation with DF. These were running conversations over years - and now decades. I asked her: "Remember when I said Father only expects a perfect effort, and you said you weren't sure you were capable of even that? I think maybe I know what He expects of us when we can't push the handcart. I think if we're face down in the snow, unable to go on, the only thing He expects is that we wish we could. And maybe what that looks like is rolling over in the snow and lying there looking up at Him until we have the strength to get up again."

That's where I've settled on the issue of perfect effort. Sometimes my perfect effort has the brilliance and blinding efficiency of watching a thoroughbred racehorse win the Kentucky Derby. Who WAS that masked woman?? Sometimes my perfect effort is making the bed and making dinner. Sometimes my perfect effort is getting dressed. There. I said it.

Heavenly Father wants my heart, and He's got it. Being perfect in Christ (Moroni 10:32-33) means to give Him what's in your wallet - be it a million dollars or two mites. In fact - Jesus Christ is so unbelievably generous - having earned the inheritance for all of us - He actually takes on your deficits when your wallet has cartoon butterflies fly out of it.

In The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis writes in the voice of a senior devil - Wormwood - to an apprentice devil, Screwtape. As a devil, Wormwood refers to God as "our Enemy" and their "cause" as devils to seduce humans away from God:

“Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy's will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.”

I like to think Wormwood is talking about all us pioneers, lyin' in the snow on summer days, at the very least, finding the strength to roll over and look up at that dear Face until we can walk toward Him again. He's so happy to wait. Oh. how He waits.

Just keep your eyes on Jesus. His eyes have never left you, not even for a second.