Whispers in the Fog

Saskatchewan is Canada’s sunniest province and, since we moved here in December, the contrast to British Columbia has been clear (pun not intended). Save for a handful of foggy or blizzardy days, it’s been blue sky and sunshine. This is good for someone prone to Seasonal Affective Disorder in the dark, winter months. Sure, it’s colder sometimes—but it’s true what they say about it being a dry cold. In fact, we’ve taken to wearing light spring jackets at temperatures when we would have been tempted to remain indoors if we were back in B.C.

This morning I was thinking about the fog leviathan that used to snake down the valley below where we lived in Kamloops and that led me to remember one sunny spring afternoon when I drove from Kamloops to Prince George.

It was not yet spring, but spring was beginning to reveal herself. The road, which a few miles back, had been covered in compact snow, was bare and dry. Snowmelt darkened the roadside pullouts. On the side of the road, black and dirty piles of melting snow sat in sparkling pools.

I drove past a still-frozen lake that was purported to be the longest lake in the area. It was white with ice and snow and a handful of ice fishing huts dotted the surface, their dark gray, the only break in the all-encompassing white.

The fog had settled over the lake. It sat, still and silent, like a blanket. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. The words came to my mind. God was there, hovering, there and everywhere. What I saw with my eyes, and perceived with my imagination, was a manifestation of truth: wherever I am, so, too, is God. Of course, the hovering ghostly fog wasn’t the actual spirit of God, and yet it was in the blue and cloudless sky, in the dust on the side of the road, and yes, even in the ghostly white hovering over the frozen lake.

It reminded me I wasn’t alone. There was a gift of reassurance in the fog if I had a heart with which to receive it. As I drove on, my eyes drifted again and again to the lake, the white, and the hovering, and I remembered I was loved.

As I think about those moments of divine awareness, I challenge myself to listen for that whisper here when ice crystals sparkle like magic fairy dust in the Saskatchewan sunshine. Or when it snows in April and I’m hungry to get out in the yard and plan this year’s garden. Or when I’m making dinner or driving to Caronport to pick up my granddaughter from school. Anytime. At all times.