My wife and I sit across from each other in Penny’s Diner in Dunsmuir. Our kids are happily shoveling pancakes in their mouths as they simultaneously drive their toy trucks through the syrup and up their sleeves. We had been driving through the night to take the kids to the snow and to give me some time to write but the snow got too anxious and decided to come down the mountain and meet us. Like a playful cat it batted our little Honda around until we finally wised up, pulled over, and checked into a hotel.

Six hours later the kid’s steam engine bodies are excited by fresh snow and needing fuel. My wife is staring at me intently with a willow of a smile as I take off my hat springing my hair to jump for the ceiling as I rub my eyes.

She likes the grey in my whiskers.

I guess I should be grateful but something in me is disappointed. I put down my hat and reach for my coffee. “Really?” I say. “yaaa,” she nods. I had just played a show the night before we left, “but what about when I am in my rock n roll clothes, hair slicked, sweat pouring from my face, black leather shoes pounding the stage? Lots of girls find that sexy.” She laughs and shakes her head no. “Really?” I repeat. “Yep, oh and I also like it when you climb trees. You are beautiful when you climb trees.”

My head pulls my hands up and I can’t stop rubbing my forehead. How can this be true? I look old and haggard like a trucker with a long way to go and a short time to get there. Hair unwashed, eyes sore from being up late then up early with the kids. I am cold, hungry and about an inch away from throwing Easton’s toy truck if he drives his syrup mobile one more time across my ear.   This is what she loves? This?   Easton begins to lick the snow off of his boot as Wilder tries to see if he can get his entire hand in a small glass of water (And by the way, yes we can all rest easy, he proved it can be done).    “Boys, lets let your father have a moment to finish his coffee and breakfast,” she says as she zips them up in puffy swollen jackets.    In a moment the diner is empty as she leaves and the cook/hotel clerk tells me he is going outside to snow plow the parking lot.

I sit staring out the window through the trees watching the cars on the highway as they move like dogs on tile. I wonder what it is that makes us push away and turn our head when faced with accepting love. Why are we all so skeptical when grace is offered so readily? There is a casualness – a wonderful absurdity in Grace that it seems we all are a bit disappointed in. We seem to think there must be something wrong with it to embrace us so completely without a care for gray hair or scars or hidden shame. Maybe this is why we turn to religion because so much of it seems to appeal to the places inside us that finds grace so unsettling. We want something to tell us it is not so easy to get. We nod our heads in agreement when religion speaks to us saying, “Grace does not come easy, you have to earn it and here is a list of things you must believe, say, and pretend to be to get it.”

The snow seems to be getting bored and begins to wonder off. I think to myself, maybe it is our need to believe in something sterner- less accepting that actually leads to our disbelief – our disappointment. We finally get so lost and exhausted jumping through ever shrinking hoops that we wander away. Maybe we all have a little Groucho Marx in us that says, “I will not be a part of any Club that would have me as a member.” I hope God is a patient God who is only waiting for us to fall down in a heep unable to fight or run away…..waiting for the chance to pick us up and hold us close.

The trucks and cars are now once again confident in their direction and purpose and begin to stream up the highway. The snow has gone back home to the mountains and awaits our arrival. I pick up my hat, drink a half a cup of coffee in one gulp, and walk to the door. As I put on my gloves before stepping out to the cold I see my children jumping in the snow. My wife’s loving gaze watching over them. She senses my stare and turns to me and looks at me with the brightness of a face of one who has not seen their beloved for a long time. She opens her arms wide and sticks out her tongue to catch the last of a few falling flakes. She then stretches her arms towards me and beckons me to her laughing. Something in me breaks like ice against a bridge and I feel this river inside of me begging to be let go. I can’t help but laugh and shake my head. Grace is absurd – beautiful and absurd. I let go of my disappointment, my doubt, my skepticism, and fear and open the door.

Posted by Trent on Monday, November 9th, 2009 at 11:37 pm.