Cure For the Common Winter Cold (heart)

A frigid, overcast day.

Both hands clenched on the wheel, I grimly wove my way through the slow traffic, mind focused on all of the impossible tasks that have to happen in the next month. We are beginning the process of moving my mother out of the large, stuff-filled house she has lived in for almost 50 years. 

My father was a Collector.

And a Depression baby. (Don't throw away a scrap of soap... you may need it one day!) 

He was also a genealogy freak. We have file cabinets of papers going back to the last century. I mean century before last. Old patient charts from his medical practice are probably down in the basement, along with the contents of his brother's New York apartment, random archaeology artifacts, playbills from 1968, World War II memorabilia, and my grandmother's grocery lists from 1938. (Well, maybe not quite that bad anymore, because my sister has been working her rear end off.) Thousands of books. Records from the 1960's. (Know anybody who could use some Montevani?) Childhood toys are still in our closets. Sentimental gifts from the 70's. My rock collection. The one trophy I won for horseback riding...

I was giving myself a pep talk on the way to do the first moving errand: Stay focused. You can do this.

It turned into a prayer: "God help us do this. We can't do this without you."

I was slightly sick to my stomach. My heart felt as cold and heavy as the dismal day.

Then this came on the radio:

(Please turn up your sound.)

I mean, can I get an Amen?

Anybody dancing?

By the second refrain, the moon roof of my little sports car was open to the sky, the steering wheel had become an electronic drum set, I was doing my Janis Joplin imitation to the chorus, and the guy in the truck next to me was calling 911. 

And the wind blew where it may...*

and chased the clouds of gloom away

filling the car... and my heart... with unspeakable joy and praise.

Worship.

(*John 3)