Being Jesus

I feel like such a wimp for getting down about life. Last weekend was the Barf-O-Rama...(not my favorite form of weight loss)...the house is still in shambles...laundry piles to the roof. It's snowing again and there is more to come. The icicles are beginning to look more like iron bars trapping everyone inside for days to come. Even my tough New England neighbors have "winter anxiety" and that horrible "hunted" look about them. "Cabin Fever"...my Oregonian friends know this well, but I have to say that I have never experienced it like this before now.

Yet, something surprising happened this morning. A little glimmer of hope. I went to my neighbors house to pick up her daughter for school, (we carpool), and she started telling me about how hard these days have been for her. I listened, and really didn't have much to say except when I told her that I cried when Aaron told me that we have another foot of snow coming. She actually ran over, put her arms around me, and gave me the truest hug I have had from any new friend since moving here. "I'm so glad I'm not the only one!" she cried into my shoulder.

That shocked me. Here I am racking my brain about how to reach out, how to share, how to be a light...and all she needed was someone to simply relate with how she was feeling.

Then I thought, isn't that what brings us to Jesus....He came here, He walked here, He suffered here...He understands. And that is why we trust Him with our struggles. He even asks for the weight of it all to be shifted to His shoulders.

I hope I was Jesus to my neighbor and I pray she comes to cry on His shoulder.