Loosening Orion’s Belt
“Hey, I can see Orion’s Belt!”
Laying across piled blankets and coats, JP watched a star-splattered sky from the back seat. Constellations pop on these brutal South Dakota nights. It seems that the colder the air, the blacker the night and the brighter the light.
He turned his gaze to the windshield and saw whisps of white powder scamper and swirl across the highway and asked, “Is this a white-out?”
“No,” I said. “Just a ground blizzard. Good thing it’s not warm enough to stick or we’d be in a real mess.”
A while later, after he spotted “one of the Dippers,” he looked through the front window again.
He may have noticed conversation in the front seat had dropped to a hush, and words were chopped off as crisp as the bitter January air.
“So . . . is this a white-out?”
“Yes,” someone replied. “This is a white-out.” I don’t know if it was me or his dad. About that time, everything sucked into a world of white.
::
For the next hour, we moved in and out of pockets of white terror on a rural highway between nowhere and nothing, riddled with hills, curves and deep ravines. Not a single new flake fell from the clear black sky, but strong winds whipped across open fields, chasing waist-deep white powder over full ditches. White pillars wrapped our vehicle into the base of a snowman gone mad, rolling across the plains sucking in anything in its path.
We pressed faces against the side glass and twisted necks around hoping for a better view out the front. But headlights smacked against an impenetrable wall of white and we lost our way. The acute disorientation that comes in the center of a whiteout devastates. With no secure point of reference, there is no way to know if one faces forward or rear, left or right. Internal compasses become useless even to those with the keenest sense of direction.
In these moments, there is no turning back, for one knows not where back is.
Nor is there standing still. A stationary vehicle, if not struck by another, would appear as just another snow drift by the time help arrived.
One can only move forward, as best as one can tell.
::
My stomach spun as Lane crept to a stop, and I noticed the rigid claw gripping the arm rest was my own. It felt like a falling dream, that sickening sensation that sweeps over me whenever one of my children is too high off the ground.
Thoughts ran in circles along with the snow. Are we even still on the road? If he pulls forward now, will we begin our descent into the ravine? Are we on that high hill that spooks me even in broad daylight?
We opened the windows and I hung out the side, plastered with hard-hitting clumps of snow.
“Come a little to the right, I can see the white line,” I told him. “Not too far, that’s the ditch!”
“I’m going to straddle the center line. I can see it better,” he decided. I bit my tongue as I wondered if there were another car on the other side of the white wall, feeling its way through the same as us.
::
At the point where we felt the most lost, I spotted a sign on the left. I pointed, and told Lane to turn that direction.
How had we veered so far off?
As he eased the wheel just to the left, it dawned on him that we saw the backside of that sign. It faced oncoming traffic. To turn in the direction of the sign would put us on the wrong side of the road, nosing straight into the ditch.
Instead, he pulled straight ahead.
We were already in our own lane.
About ten miles from home, we coasted into the valley and out of the white swirling pockets. We closed the windows and I shivered as the white stucco began to melt through my clothes and drip into my eyes.
The city slept, still, unknowing under the jet black sky. If JP had still been interested, he probably could have looked out his window to see Orion’s Belt twinkling back him.
::
Those white pockets of terror, they strike hard and fast. Clear sky one moment, raging blizzard the next.
Those raging blizzards of our uncertain life here on the ground disorient. Road markers disappear. Light absorbs into bright white.
And I don’t know so much.
While I cannot see out of the pocket, there is One who can see in. He sees Orion wink, and He sees me grope about in my blindness.
This One, He reminded Job that it wasn’t so important that Job understood, that Job knew, that Job could find the markers. What was important was that God knew, God understood, God placed the markers. And when we grope, whether in the dark or in the white, we find Him.
29 From whose womb comes the ice?
And the frost of heaven, who gives it birth?30 The waters harden like stone,
And the surface of the deep is frozen.31 “Can you bind the cluster of the Pleiades,
Or loose the belt of Orion?32 Can you bring out Mazzaroth in its season?
Or can you guide the Great Bear with its cubs?33 Do you know the ordinances of the heavens?
Can you set their dominion over the earth?34 “Can you lift up your voice to the clouds,
That an abundance of water may cover you? (Job 38:29-34, NKJV)
I don’t need to see Orion. I need to know the One who loosens and tightens his belt.
::
Photo credit: Orion’s Belt, NASA
Keep moving forward…one of the hardest things to do when one cannot see the way. Until I learn to trust the one who “placed the markers”. When I find Him, even in those times when I am groping, I find treasures from His hand.
Glad you guys made it home safely!
2010/01/12 at 2:54 PM
Lyla:
That story brings back memories of driving to Minneapolis one winter day. Somewhere east of Ortonville we drove into the same white conditions you describe, except that it was daytime. Didn’t matter. I still could not see the road ahead of me. I drove for 40 miles or so hanging my head out of the window, the heater on full blast ( it was 15 below outside) because if I looked straight down, I could see the center line of the highway. We stopped in Willmar and stayed overnight rather than drive the other 90 miles on into Minneapolis. I suspect almost everyone in your part of the country has had that experience at least once.
Thanks for the great illustration reminding us of keeping our focus on the true compass.
Dad
2010/01/12 at 6:24 PM
I love the picture you painted here with your words.
How true…how true….
2010/01/12 at 6:29 PM
Nancy – He doesn’t mind us groping, does He, as long as we’re still looking.
Dad – if I recall, you, Laura and I drove through a milder ground blizzard when we moved out here. Had never seen wind before like that first night on the highway.
Julie – thanks. It looks better from this side of the pocket.
2010/01/12 at 9:14 PM
Lyla, thank you for this. My ground blizzard whited me out yesterday with a trip to the ER and an unexpected diagnosis. I survived by just “doing the next thing” but that’s not living. I don’t want to merely survive. How He must guide us when we don’t even see Him…
2010/01/13 at 9:18 AM
Kelly, praying for these things right now.
Yes, He guides even when we don’t see. As I read your comment this morning, I thought, “Well, here’s the thing I actually wanted to say in my post but never quite found it there.” This thing: I see Him best when I’m not safely buckled in my seat, looking through clear windows at sun-lit paths and enjoying the warmth of a well functioning heater. When we saw best? With head out the window, spitting out the snow that pelted my face, shivering at the clods dumping down my neck, and seeing no more than the ground straight below. And even that, sometimes dicey. Safe way? Not always the best way.
Ouchie.
2010/01/13 at 1:32 PM
Oh Lyla–this is beautiful. I got goosebumps. We don’t have snow down here like that. Just the thought is terrifying enough. But the image of something terrible swinging out of nowhere and us having to plod forward, blind, trusting and looking to God…such a beautiful image. I needed that image this week. Since Saturday, I’ve been a flurry of activity, having to make lots of “house construction decisions,” and while that may sound wonderful and stupid to agonize over, it’s so hard to know what the right choice is when faced with so many different decisions with an equally great number of options for each one. I’ve got some praying to do…
2010/01/13 at 10:34 PM
Jennifer, one of the things that keeps tapping at the side of my head over this is that we were lost in white. I don’t know about you, but I associate white with good, light, true. I’m much more accustomed to feeling lost and groping in the dark. So I can see that it’s easy to be overwhelmed and dizzy with good things as well.
2010/01/13 at 10:37 PM
I mentioned you at my blog today. I just wanted you to know I appreciate you! http://bit.ly/8cy6Os
2010/01/14 at 8:50 AM
Oh, my!
I don’t think that I’ve ever heard of a white out before I read this story.
That shows you how far south of the MDL I live.
I’m so glad that y’all made it home safely.
Love the application of how we handle spiritual and situational white outs.
Sweet dreams.
2010/01/14 at 7:43 PM
Deb, as I write this my husband is reading the article in the weekly paper about that night…the number of vehicles that left the road and got stuck as well as a train that got stuck and the rescue vehicles that got stuck en route to help! It was crazy. And I’ve lived here for 40+ years and don’t believe I’ve ever been in it that bad. (Usually smart enough to stay home, but basketball calls.)
It’s something else — but you Floridians have your own problems, no?
2010/01/14 at 9:23 PM
Oof. That makes my stomach do back-flips. (Because of the snowstorms I’ve driven through, and the lifestorms, too.)
Also, I appreciated your Scripture verses. They became my study this morning. So, thank you for that, too.
2010/01/15 at 9:01 AM