O Precious the Snow

Winter is not astronomical, as many have observed before me. It’s not to do with the sun disappearing and coming back. Winter is meteorological. It isn’t winter until we get a good snow.

Last year it was barely winter at all: we didn’t get a proper snow until January. This year, we’ve so far had a reprieve from the relentless lukewarm gray of the warming climate. Last week there was ice, and today it snowed.

It started as I was getting ready to go out. I was feeling a little jumpy. I haven’t had a severe panic attack in about a year, but it’s winter, and that means I’m a little jumpy. I’m always jumpy. Winter is not only meteorological; winter is psychological. The days get the shortest and the nights get the darkest, and I start to get anxiety.

One of the ways I cope with being jumpy is to go for a drive. When you’re driving, you have to keep a certain speed limit and watch out for red and green lights, which keeps your mind busy. You can’t scroll on your phone to look for things to be afraid of when you drive, which means you are safe from anxiety blossoming into a full-blown OCD spiral. It also helps with the jumpiness because when you drive, you go places. When you go places, you feel accomplished and forget to be jumpy. So when the jumpiness started, I turned on the radio and went for a drive.

The snow was swirling straight at me in a volley of soft wet cotton. I don’t like driving on ice, and I’ve learned better than to drive on top of packed snow, but I like driving when the snow is blowing and it’s just near freezing temperatures. It’s even more mesmerizing than going for a drive usually is. It feels like driving through outer space– that moment in a bad sci fi movie where the stars start flying past, to show you’re going impossibly fast.

When I put it that way, I guess that winter is astronomical after all.

I didn’t mean to drive to the chapel, at the old hospital, but I did. I happened to go down Lawson instead of my usual route downtown, and when I saw the parking lot wasn’t very full, I parked there.

I found myself in the Presence.

Sometimes I panic when I go into a Catholic church, and sometimes I get angry, but just then I only felt a little jumpy.

I sat there, jumpy. I gazed at Him, and He gazed at me.

I mentioned that argument we’d had on Holy Saturday,or maybe the one I imagined– the one where I had a full blown panic attack about going to confession and realized I absolutely wasn’t ready. I thought about the famous Charismatic Catholic priest who used to hug me and give me a kiss on the forehead after deliverance prayer sessions, and the way he’d lovingly squeeze my hand after confession, that stroke on the cheek, that pat on the shoulder, and how he’s now being posthumously sued for sexual abuse. I thought of how I hadn’t realized I had been groomed by a predator until years after he died. I thought of the other sexually abusive priests who have heard my confessions– I know of two who were removed from public ministry, and one who pleaded guilty and ended up in a facility.

I thought of how naively I assumed all priests kept the seal of the confessional, and how betrayed I felt when I found out that some don’t.

It would be easier if I didn’t believe in Christ at all, but I do. He keeps haunting me, suffering with me, getting my attention even when I think I’m done with Him.

I mentioned how scared I still am that He will be angry with me for being terrified of a sacrament. How lonely and sick I feel that the Charismatic Renewal ruined my life and left me here in Steubenville to find my own way. But that I am trying to follow Him.

Yes, I’m still scared that He’ll be angry with me, but I’m not as scared as I was when I had that panic attack in the Spring.

I examined my conscience, counting the Ten Commandments on my fingers with all the silly mnemonics I memorized studying for my Confirmation class when I was Adrienne’s age. I told Him I was sorry, and hoped that was enough.

I was back in the car a moment later, with the shooting stars of snow still blowing. They were sticking everywhere, coating the trees and the bushes and the grass in a pure white blanket.

The stars rocketed past me, sticking to every surface.

I thought of that song I kept singing as the cold weather came in: My Lord, what a morning. My Lord, what a morning! My Lord, what a morning, when the stars begin to fall! 

And that other song I sing whenever it snows:

O Precious is the Flow, that makes me white as snow! No other font I know, nothing but the Blood of Jesus! 

Was I jumpy just then? No, of course not.

It was snowing, and everything was all right.