God Moment

Okay, this is going to be incredibly cheesy. But I'm going to say it.

Yesterday, I was sitting in my office waiting for students to not show up (does anyone ever come to office hours besides grad students?) and all I could think about was how PhD decisions are supposed to come my way this week. And how on Wednesdays, I don't usually get home until after 10 p.m. A letter from Nebraska or OU or FSU could have been sitting there in the mailbox, lonely and cold, for 8 or 9 hours. So I decided to go home between office hours and workshop--something I never do.

I rushed home (standing up Rick, who was planning to come by to talk thesis formatting) and checked the mail...but there was only a letter from the cable company. Nothing special. Nothing worth driving home for.

Needless to say, I was annoyed. Annoyed that I wasted the time and gas driving home when I didn't need to. Annoyed that I had to wait at least another 24 hours before I knew anything. Just annoyed. I've been having some cabin fever/mental exhaustion crankiness lately and the annoyance happens easily.

At any rate, I decided to make the best of it and had pancakes for lunch before heading back to school. I was driving down rt 8 kind of half-there when the traffic slowed down for no obvious reason and the sun came out (it had been cloudy all day). It was around 4:30, so it was pretty low, and I was almost stopped next to the only tree-lined portion of rt 8 between my house and school, and the trees, covered in ice, back-lit with brilliant sunlight, looked amazing. Like something out of a science fiction movie. Like something completely unnatural--except that it was completely natural. I rolled past these trees at 10 mph, and the second I was past them, the traffic sped up, the clouds came back, and it was just another gray, ugly winter afternoon. But for a second, everything slowed down. For a second, I forgot how annoyed and frustrated I was and just thought about something beautiful.

A God Moment.

It's been a long time since I've been to church, since I've considered myself a religious person, but I've never lost my faith in a higher power. Sometimes I don't call it God, but fate or the universe, or something new-agey like that, but it's still the same thing I prayed to when I was sitting in a church or at a youth group retreat. And even though sometimes I forget about it, there are moments when I'm too lost in the day-to-day and whatever It is slows me down, reminds me that there's something bigger.

I was in a great mood last night, and maybe that is why.

*

My mom saw my post on the six word memoir and she sent me one of her own:

New lung.
New life.
New world.

I like hers better than mine.