Perfect Ending

I love my job. Really, I do.

Every so often, though, I arrive at the office with a sigh.

"I really, really wanted to stay home today," I tell anyone who will listen. "It was so cozy in bed, and I didn't want to bundle up and get out in the cold. I wanted to read a good book and drink tea and knit. I really didn't want to come to work."

Yesterday I was a world-class whiner. Instead of getting my Sunday afternoon nap I went--again--with Husband to the apartment where we are cleaning out his mother's belongings. My back hurt, I was tired, and I knew at least three of my children were on the road from one place to another (which in spite of my confidence in them brings a tiny worry).

"I knew this move would take a while," I snipped to Husband as I lifted one end of a mattress, "but I didn't realize it would take up EVERY SINGLE FREE MOMENT of my Christmas vacation."

Graciously, he didn't respond to this childishness with the eyeroll it deserved. Instead he offered to let me stay home while he picked up the Boys from the airport, an offer my behavior certainly had not earned.

Today Husband is scrambling through the end-of-year scrambling accountants do and I had planned to finish up the packing.  Instead, I woke up to the sound of tires slushing through the intersection next to the House on the Corner.  Huge flakes were drifting straight down, turning our view of the campus across the street into something from an improbably perfect movie set.

And because it's New Year's Eve and not the typical Monday morning there is nothing pressuring me to get going. No calls to be made cancelling classes, no alertness for students making bad sledding choices, no scramble to find boots and scarves. I plan to read a good book and drink tea and knit. The packing of the apartment will have to wait until tomorrow, when roads are cleared.

I'll turn on the Christmas lights one last time and think about how blessed I am, to have a perfect ending to this year that has been so full of unearned blessings, blessings my own behavior surely would have forfeited.

God is good.