Through the windowpane...........

      At age 19 I entered Canada as an illegal immigrant, accompanied by my draft-dodging husband. It was fall, the sun was still shining, the trees adorned with the beauty of red, golden leaves. It was an adventure.

We drove North trying to find a place to settle. Calgary was a bustle of people and businesses but nothing seemed to be open to us. We continued North through the hills and mountains, car packed to the hilt, young, well and strong.

Edmonton, Alberta was a huge metropolis. Industry, large buildings, masses of people filling the side-walks in the first blasts of winter weather. Hundreds of bundled European immigrants huddled around store fronts. Women with head scarves, old woolen coats and layers of sweaters looked out with with dark eyes with the haunting look of need and want.  Men with worn and torn clothing wore days of bearded stubble with an air of hopelessness woven into the fabric of their existence. 

I should have seen all these signs and realized I was not running away from the draft but into a culture where poverty was running rampant and the last place I would find shelter was where a country struggled to cope with an already too full census of immigrants. But, youth and the blind eyes of people who have never known want, or need kept stubbornly on pressing into the quickly freezing city.

    A search through local newspapers and we found a small ad, few words, small apartment for rent, and an address. We stopped here and there, asking directions, trying to find English speaking people to help.  We finally found an older two story home with a large desolate looking porch. We knocked loudly and in response, a short, stout dark-haired man appeared. He spoke no English and through a series of hand signs, and gesturing towards the newspaper ad the communications were made. The man waved us into the home and took us up their stairs to an empty small apartment carved into their home. 

     My husband and the home owner somehow determined a price and money exchanged hands and we unloaded our car and entered our temporary shelter. It seemed fun. Small kitchen, large claw foot tub in the bathroom and an ancient linoleum floor patterned in an old world theme. The windows in the home with old, wood-framed ones with two windows. I had never seen windows like that being raised in the temperate climate of the Pacific Northwest.  But it was new, and therefore interesting to me.

     The weather continued to turn colder. Waves of deep, bone chilling cold blanketing the earth with an intensity of cold I had never experienced. Snow came and blanketed the earth with a fresh coating of thick, white softness. My husband found a part-time job under the table in a nearby gas station. We quickly discovered we didn't have the clothing for the deepening freezing temperatures. As part of our car load we had brought a radio and seeking through the stations we found an English speaking one where temperatures were reported at 60 below freezing with the wind chill factor.

     It wasn't starting to be all that fun as we discovered food alone was shrinking our money, (my bank savings) and the future looked bleak. One morning, alone in the empty apartment I stood looking out the back window, trying to see through the lacing of ice coating the panes of glass. In the tracings the ice made even here was beauty, intricate designs of ice crystals.  Outside, I could see the remnants of their back-yard garden, laying waste under the frozen blanket of snow and ice. The city-scape, smoky peaks of old homes hugging the earth trying to find warmth were lit by the sun. illuminating the earth with a heartless light. 

     "God", I breathed a prayer. "Where are you in all this mess?"  There was no answer except the quiet of the morning and the silence of the frozen garden.

I feel like that now in a way, decades past, over 45 years ago to be exact. I am looking out a window on a frozen world, and I no longer young and strong am wondering what the future holds. So many responsibilities tug at me, so many undone chores, so many problems. 

     My Bible, my comfort sits at my house away from where I am staying. I meant to take it, but forgot it in my rush to pack up and leave;  and I miss my daily reading. I know God is still here, He isn't confined to the walls that comprise my home but is everywhere, (omnipresent). 

     I know: "His strength is sufficient for me, His grace is made perfect in weakness."  2 Corinthians 12:9,  but. still and all, my window to the world looks out onto a frozen world where alone I face a future where old age, want and need approach with a quickening pace. 

     Help me Lord in this season of my life to remember that just as you were with me in Canada, all those years ago, you will be with me now, aging, cold and in Oregon. I have food, I have clothes, I have a place to stay. Help me to count my blessings and to learn how to keep helping where I can and am able.

    Thank you God, that even looking through a window of my world veiled with frozen events of life and struggles, you are there.

    Someday, there will be joy in the morning, whether in this world or the next.