My trip to D.C. wasn’t what I expected. My flight going out got cancelled due to fog. People in the line in front of me were being bused to San Francisco to sit at that fogged in airport. But when I stepped to the desk, the woman looked at my ticket and said, “Do you mind if I send you to a different Washington D.C. airport?”

I said “However you can get me there,” and she rerouted me through Phoenix on a completely different airline. “That never happens,” said a frequent flyer on my new flight. “You got lucky.” It was the first little miracle of my trip.

The second miracle came during my talk on Saturday morning. As I was speaking to the ladies of Portico Church it began to snow. Big, beautiful flakes that settled like a blanket over a freezing city. Who knew snow warms things up. We went from single digits to the thirties, which felt almost balmy after something like seven degrees early that morning.

The thing was, I’d prayed for snow.

And it fell soft and steady and oh so sweetly as I fell apart while speaking at the retreat, and it all kind of came together anyway, and I realized something new in my life was indeed beginning, and I wasn’t sure I was ready.

Because everything has a cost.

Like that beautiful snow storm that shut down the city later that day.

But this didn’t happen right away. Not the city shut down or me shut down. Mostly because my best friend since we were 12 years old, Christy, was taking such good care of me. Here we are together at the church office before the ladies retreat. Before I cried and messed up my makeup.

I borrowed Christy’s coat and she wiped my tears and seeing her as a pastor’s wife seemed so right. So destined. Like how could we have not ended up here? Thirty-five years of talking about God together and then there was this and the snow coming down. Walls coming down. Standing in front of a roomful of strangers spilling my salvation story all messy. Because really, salvation is messy. Sinners are messy. Snow in the city is messy.

But first it is blessed. The day was blessed. Magical really. My sister-in-law and niece, which I haven’t seen in several years came, and my dear friend Kim who used to live in California came, and after the retreat we slipped away for lunch at an old-fashioned Irish Pub, walking through the snowfall like little girls doing twirls with snowflakes in our hair.

And by that night when we braved snowy streets to visit a pizza parlor/brew pub called The Lost Dog, sleds lined the parking lot. Parents transporting their children to dinner in sleds instead of cars and I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything so cute in my life. Kids looking like that little boy from The Christmas Story, bundled so bountifully they walked like tiny robots into the restaurant.

And we laughed and laughed and laughed. My best friend since junior high makes me laugh. And Christy’s husband Jason, a gentle pastor with a bold wit who four-wheeled us through the snow like a born and bred East Coaster, makes me laugh, too. But underneath all the laughter, I was feeling shaken after my talk that morning at the retreat because what came out of my mouth wasn’t what I expected. What came out was raw and painful and I didn’t cry pretty tears at all. Snot ran and my mascara ran and Christy got up and mopped my face in the middle of it, and I spilled my guts and it was kind of awful.

I don’t know what happened.

But I know what happened.

God happened.

And I settled down to sleep that night not impressed with myself at all as a speaker, deeply embarrassed with myself truth be told, yet knowing God did his work that day in spite of me. Then at one in the morning, I fell out of bed thinking a tornado was about to level the house. It was a snowplow. I had no idea those things rumbled like that, and by 5 A.M. I gave up on sleep altogether because I’d tossed and turned since the snowplow cleared the street.

God wanted to talk to me. I knew it after the snowplow. God like that snowplow, and I didn’t want to listen. I just wanted to go home. Forget going forward with my nonfiction book. Forget ever speaking again in public. Just go home and quietly farm and feed and love my not so quiet boys and never fly again.

I hate flying.

And it never fails, I always end up seated next to someone who won’t leave me alone. Who talks and talks and talks until my ears fall off. I really think I might have lost an ear on the flight out. My seatmate Jim spent hours telling my why the 49ers had a tough year. And why the Cardinals were the best baseball team ever. And how he’d tried to get to California, but, because of bad weather, gave up in Phoenix, and turned around. Literally, he turned around in sunny Arizona, cancelling his vacation in California, cancelling seeing his mom and sister, family he hadn’t seen in five years, and I thought he was kind of nuts and talked him into hearing me out on why we all need Jesus, some of us more than others.

Jim really needed Jesus.

But now I was ready to turn around myself. After flying across the United States to do a book reading and talk about the God I love, I just wanted to never do it again. “I’m not good at this,” I told the Lord after the snowplow woke me up. “I miss my family. I don’t like to travel. I don’t like speaking. I don’t like crying in front of strangers. Snot ran down my face when I cried.”

They aren’t strangers. They’re your sisters in Christ. And I gave you, Christy. She wiped your face for you.

“I made a fool of myself,” I told God.

This isn’t about you.

“I can’t do another talk like that. Ever!”

You’ll do more.

And I got out of bed, grabbed my Bible and journal, and went and sat in the living room in front of the big picture window because I wanted to see the red cardinal. The shy bird that looked like blood against the snow. But the sun wasn’t up yet. So I sat there kind of pouting because I just wanted to be home. My little gods of comfort and safety were pulling my strings and I was dancing like a puppet. I knew this before about myself, but this trip had shown me again– oh so very clearly revealed to me– how these two idols of comfort and safety control my life. And I didn’t want to die to myself, either. Didn’t want to bare my heart. Bare my soul. And in the process, fall apart in front of people.

Falling apart while speaking was the worst.

As dawn arrived, freezing rain fell, sealing the snow in a layer of ice, and I thought, I’ll never see that red cardinal now. I’d been watching for him constantly since I spotted him on Friday morning. What glory. That ruby red bird in a world of white snow.

Here is Christy and Jason’s house where I stayed in Arlington.

“Cardinals are shy birds,” Christy said when I tried to snap that bird’s picture and he was gone in a flash. Since then, I’d been trying to capture him with my iPhone camera, but it was impossible. He wasn’t the only cardinal coming to Christy’s bird feeder. There were several, a couple of orange-ish red male cardinals and several female cardinals all brown and orange. But I really liked the ruby red cardinal. The one that reminded me of Jesus’ blood against the snow.

And as I sat there reading my Bible after the freezing rain, he came. Lit in the branches right in front of the window, right in front of me sitting on the couch, and he stayed there for a very long time not shy at all, letting me look him over to my heart’s content, and I cried.

And then it happened. I finally felt God’s comfort, and finally felt God’s safety, and my little idols slipped away all ashamed of themselves because they couldn’t compare to the Living God’s comfort and safety.

A little while later, I walked into the kitchen, and there is was. The heart-shaped donut I’d wanted the day before at the retreat. All these beautiful donuts at the retreat and the heart-shaped ones so pretty, but I was too nervous to eat one before speaking. In a box on Christy’s kitchen counter four donuts remained with this one there.

I saved you your donut, it felt like God said to me, and I cried some more.

God’s been speaking to me through heart-shaped things since I started writing my nonfiction book. Heart-shaped rocks, the white heart-shaped mark on my mare’s forehead. When I saw the heart-shaped pink donuts at the retreat, I knew this was God smiling on me.

So I took a bite and custard filled my mouth. I’m a custard girl. Creme Brulee is my favorite dessert. I had no idea that pink heart-shaped donut was filled with custard. It felt like God had this donut made just for me. With my exact taste in mind.

And then I really cried.

I cried and watched through the kitchen window, another big picture window, a black and white English Springer Spaniel bouncing through the snow drifts like a happy little kid.

Enjoy yourself, God seemed to say. I’ve got this and I’ve got you and I love you and this will be fun. We’re going to have fun together doing this. 

And later that day, after our own private church service at Christy and Jason’s dining table because church had been cancelled due to ice and snow, I shoveled snow. And it was fun. The sun came out. Forty degrees felt warm and I shoveled snow with Jason until Christy said, “Don’t wear yourself out, girl!”

And the next day I flew home. And for a change my seatmate didn’t talk the whole time. In fact, she slept the whole time. She was a professional plane sleeper. Nobody sat in the middle seat between us, and when she realized our seats didn’t recline because the emergency exit row was behind us, she said, “You can lie down and sleep on the middle seat. I have my neck pillow so I’ll be fine.”

And I thought, I’m a grown woman, a middle-aged woman, there is no way I’m lying down on the middle seat like a kid. But an hour later I found myself rolling up my sweater for a pillow, and crashing on the middle seat because I couldn’t look more ridiculous then my darling seatmate. I couldn’t help myself. I had to sneak a picture of her to share with you because her frog mask killed me. She wore it and slept for nearly six hours on that plane.

I kid you not, I don’t think anything has ever impressed me so much, that young woman sleeping in her frog mask, and another miracle happened. I fell asleep on a plane. Something I thought impossible for me. I’ve flown back and forth to Germany half a dozen times in my life, 13 hour flights, and I’ve never been able to sleep while flying. 

So there it is. My trip in a nut shell. In a frog mask.

If God makes me do something like this again, I’m getting a frog mask. Maybe I can speak in a frog mask. That way I won’t see anybody, and they won’t see me crying, and hopefully Christy can be there to wipe my nose and fix my mascara and take me four-wheeling through a winter wonderland. To a place called:The Lost Dog where the pizza is perhaps the best I’ve ever eaten and the kids all look like that little boy from The Christmas Story.

What a trip!

And can you believe people mow their snow?! I’ve never seen anything like it in my life.