Hello friends.  Since my word announcement of Laughter. I’ve been deep in poetry assignments.. and snow! Kelowna experienced its first snow day in 35 years and biggest snowfall in 78 years.

Here’s my Facebook status on the snow day.

‘Attempted to reverse car off drive this morning. Hero neighbor arrived with monster shovel to remove even more snow. Tyres kept on spinning. Neighbor tried again to reverse my car… No joy. All kids out of the car to push. Still won’t budge. Then … After 15 minutes and the children now late for school. I discreetly took off the parking brake (handbrake) and away we went… When I said laughter was my word this year. That includes at myself!

Oh I laughed…

Sledding, igloo building and general play was high priority as the kids got a couple of days added to their Christmas holidays.

Josiah and Emily enjoying their new home.

Alongside this, Phil and I enjoyed the snowshoe trails up at Big White. Love snowshoeing! What a great workout too – notching up my 10,000 steps daily goal on my new Fitbit.

I write from Big White where we are staying for the weekend to celebrate Emily and Jessica’s 16th birthday! 16! When I say ‘we’ that’s me and 10 teens.

On the way to Big White.

I’ll end this snowy snippet with this from John Ortberg’s book ‘Soul Keeping‘

Farmers in the Midwest used to run a rope from their house to the barn at the first sight of a blizzard. They knew stories of people who had died in their own yards during a whiteout because they couldn’t find their way home. Parker Palmer writes in ‘ that the ‘blizzard of the world’ is the fear and frenzy and deceit and indifference to the suffering of others that separates us from our own souls and our moral bearings. What we need, he said, is a rope from the back door to the barn so we can find our way home again. ‘When we catch sight of the soul, we can survive the blizzard without losing our hope or our way’. 

With God as our rope. What or who is helping us to hold on? It might be a person who ensures we don’t wander, a practice of prayer, exercise or journaling. It might be therapy. Or solitude. It might be a place. Or even (if you’re like me) all of the above.

What matters is that there is a rope and we’re all holding on to find our way home. Our true home.

Have a great week. Whatever the weather.

Love, Michelle x

Ps. Lookout for the ‘prophetic mashup 2015’ on the blog this week.