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Topic: Winter (11/14/05)
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TITLE: When Winter Beauty Turns to Winter Beast | Previous Challenge Entry
By Teresa Hollums
11/14/05 -
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I opened my eyes groggily to feel intense cold in the cabin in which we had already spend 2 days of my precious spring break. The previous days had a light 2-inch snowfall that had drifted lazily down onto the cabin and onto the evergreens surrounding us.
Looking out of the windows, I said a quick prayer to God, “Dear Lord, who created everything, thank you so much for this lovely white beauty of winter with her spreading white soft snow dust over everything.” The snowflakes pasted themselves against the window pane and didn’t melt. The lacy coating seemed to be piling up with 6-sided frostings all over the window.
Suddenly it dawned on me that they should be melting at least some. “Oh, well, I said, “guess I need to turn up the heat in the cabin.” Finally I opened the doorand looked out. The scene took away my breath with the large piles of freshly fallen snow. However, as I looked closer, a nagging worry began to take hold. The trees were actually bending over with the weight of the very heavy snowfall. I barely found the top of the car. More doubts began nagging me when I tried to turn on the water and there was none. There was also no flushing of commodes, no turning up the heat, no warmth anywhere but under the covers of the bed that I had left.
My heart began to pound with a quiet and growing fear. Finally, I realized the terrible truth about being in the middle of a heavy mountain snowstorm without the one of the most necessary things in my sunny, pampered world from which I had come only a few days before—heat!!
Almost panicking, I ran to wake my husband and told him that during the night a too- heavy snowfall had come and had probably knocked out all the power. All the pipes had frozen in the cabin. “Hurry, hurry,” I urged my husband, “We need to get out of here while we can—if we can now.”
Finally, my husband and my son got ready and we packed the car after working almost 20 minutes to uncover it, and we started home.
I looked back at what I was sure would have been a beautiful scene of winter loveliness if I were just sitting in my warm house at home, but now I was actually in the winter scene and totally unprepared to be in it. Winter beauty really had turned to a winter beast for me. My closing prayer was quite different from the thanking-God one that I had uttered earlier that same morning. It was, “Dear Lord, please take us safely from this place and help to truly be safe in your power and love as we return home.”
Again and again God reminds me that comfort and beauty are a luxury to enjoy—but to never think that I am the reason for it, Only by our turning to God can we find the real answer to our life’s journey. Whether we are feeling the appreciation of beauty or we know the real apprehension of coming tragedies and problems, then God is always with us if we but turn to Him.
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Nice piece of writing, you built the mood effectively. A few edits to clean up, and spaces between paragraphs for your readers' eyes. Well done!
“My closing prayer was quite different from the thanking-God one that I had uttered earlier that same morning. It was, “Dear Lord, please take us safely from this place and help to truly be safe in your power and love as we return home.” Enjoyed the read. God Bless. Helen