Unique as a Snowflake

 

I was thanking God this morning for all the beauty I’m surrounded by, and in particular the blessings of all my unique Christmas boughs. Each one has a story. I love the diversity of the ornaments, the themes, what they are each made of, and their different colors. As I’m thanking God for His blessings, I suddenly have an “ah ha” moment, there is one thing that ties all of the boughs together. Ice and snowflakes. All these years and I never noticed it. The Michigan State bough has several Spartan snowflakes. The “folk art” bough is primarily all wooden snowflakes of different sizes and shapes. In the living room my original bough is made with handcrafted glass icicles from a local artist, over 30 years old. There is also a dragonfly and metal snowflake bough. The bedroom bough of purple and fuchsia bulbs has three-dimensional metal snowflakes I found at a hardware store in Florida 20 years ago and intricate silver snowflakes, both have to be polished every year. A new bough went up this year in the bathroom and contains all of my favorite ornaments that used to go on my tree. I call it my element bough because there is wood, fiber, glass, metal, clay, bamboo, oranges, and porcelain ornaments. There is even a sand dollar with Mary and baby Jesus painted on it. Materials matter when you are a textile major. My Christmas tree is filled with crocheted snowflakes I received as a wedding gift and has a wooden snowflake as the tree topper. This year I added giant paper snowflakes to the snowman decorations in my kitchen.

So, I start praying into snowflakes. Why do I love them? Why is God highlighting them? This obviously goes with my blog theme. Does God want me to write about snowflakes and if so, what does he want me to say?

“My people are like snowflakes.” Each one is created uniquely, no two, not even twins are completely identical. God the creator of all of earth, designed each one of us in our mother’s wombs to be one-of-a-kind.  God’s unending love imagined cultures, diversity, and beauty in a rainbow of colors. He gave each one of us our own unique identity and purpose.

Wilson Bentley was a young boy who also loved snowflakes. He would draw them, study them, and grew up to be the first person to ever photograph them, proving that each one was different. A few years ago I learned about Masaru Emoto, a Japanese scientist who attempted to prove water is alive. He took glasses of water and exposed them to different types of music. He then froze the water and looked at the icicle formations. Water that was exposed to classical, gentle music had beautiful formations, while the water that was exposed to heavy metal music showed deformed and ugly crystals. While the science is questionable, because he couldn’t repeat the results under a controlled environment, it does remind me about our walk with Jesus. Jesus introduced himself as the living water to the woman at the well. He said whoever drank of his water would never thirst again. If we have accepted Jesus’s gift of salvation and invited Him into our hearts, He lives inside of us. However, the world we live in is filled with ugly music, filled with selfishness, pride, evil, hatred, offensive, and anger. If we don’t constantly turn to the source of our living water, our hearts can become tainted, and the beauty of the God of Peace that should reflect through our words, actions, and thoughts, can cut and hurt others. Emoto believed praying over the water could heal it. We know as Christians we communicate and invite Jesus into our lives when we pray. We have the choice to change our focus from a world full of evil and challenges, to the love of Christ, who died to remove our sin and give us a life of abundant peace and joy.

When we recognize others for their unique beauty, when we respect the God given gifts they walk in, and love on each other we honor God in unity. Thinking of snowflakes, we still each have our own DNA, but when we function as a community and the bride of Christ our hearts melt and become one. We join Christ, the living water, sent to cleanse and beautify the earth by spreading the good news. This Christmas as we decorate with snowflakes, set up our manager sets, and love on our families and community, may we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, the one son of God who came to save us all. Let us move closer to becoming unified in God’s love and salvation. May we become one water through Christ

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I See You

 For over a year the words “I see you” have been echoing in my head whenever I pray. Since COVID there is so much judgement, assumptions, and anger that I feel like people have lost the ability to REALLY see each other. Lately, I have found myself quickly judging others actions as well. I had been praying to be able to see others as God does when I had a small stroke at the beginning of March. I was fortunate that it only affected my left eye leaving it paralyzed. I was still able to take care of myself, but I couldn’t drive and if I had both eyes open at the same time, I had double vision and everything I looked at was either on top of something else or blurry, a lot like looking through water. Images in the water are hard to see clearly, and items you reach for at the bottom of the lake or ocean aren’t always located the first time. I spilled a lot of beverages in the beginning and laughed at the number of times I grabbed at things and missed.

I have an amazing group of friends that took me shopping for food and gave me rides to doctor appointments. At home I wore a pirate like eye-patch, but when I was out, I just closed one eye when I needed to see something. I learned to adjust to the blurry vision, mainly so that I didn’t make others uncomfortable. It’s interesting to me the assumptions that I came across. I can’t tell you how many times men winked at me as I was leaving a restaurant, when I was just trying to make it to the door without running into someone or something.

As an intercessor I am used to praying for others who I don’t know very well. God has always given me insight as to how to pray, so I’m used to walking into a room of people who think of me as a stranger, unaware of how deeply I see them. However, when I lost my full sight all of this disappeared from my mind. I had moments of self-pity and times when I felt trapped unable to safely leave my house alone. There were a few people I asked to pray for me, but until I asked someone in person my memories of who I am as an intercessor and my history with God didn’t come to mind. I never doubted from the moment I lost my sight that God wouldn’t heal me and I know without a doubt that he did not cause my stroke. My experience of walking through storms with God has taught me that there are almost always lessons to be learned. The bible clearly states that God can turn every situation around for His glory. Storms or periods of difficulty are life changing movements. We can get angry and hold onto trauma, building walls that trap us for decades or we can ask God to give us a vision of where we need healing and open ourselves up to see all He would have us see. As people prayed for me, I asked God what He would have me learn. I want to move forward; I don’t ever want to be trapped in pain and anger. I welcome storms for the turning points they offer. If there aren’t any lessons, then by all means heal me right away, but don’t let me miss this opportunity for greater healing, so much more than just my sight.

As my sight slowly improved, so did my vision of who God created me to be. Moving objects like cars, trees, movies, and people were the last things to come back into view. One night I was watching a show and suddenly everything was clear, just like that. As I praised God, he reminded me of being baptized. Under the water, where things are blurry, it can symbolize how we see life without him. When we come up out of the water, there is a sudden clarity and fresh hope. We are fully seen by the one who created us and knows us to the core.