Marcus Redding's Snow Day

There was a knock at the door. A single knock. Lauren stirred from her sleep. Another single knock. She fumbled for her cell phone so she could see what time it was. Another knock. Squinting at the cell phone she saw it was 7:42 a.m. Another single knock. “Who in the world would be knocking on their apartment door this early on Saturday morning?” Another knock, but it wasn’t coming from the door. It was the window. But it was a second story window with nothing underneath it. What’s going on? She stumbled in her pajamas to the window in the living room and peeked out of the blinds. The windows were all fogged over. Another knock. Something hit the window! Someone was throwing things at their window!

“Marcus! Come here, I’m scared!” she half-yelled, half-whispered. Where was he? Something else hit the window. She pulled open the blinds and used her pajama sleeves to make a little clear circle. Thwap! Something else hit the window. It was white. It was a snowball.

Snow! Look at the snow! It lined every tree branch! It covered the ground! Must have been six or seven inches deep! Beautiful!

But who was that lunatic down there throwing snowballs at their window? Someone had built two snow people and made two snow angels. Above the two angels, written in the snow was “Marcus and Lauren.” Marcus was the lunatic who woke her up by throwing snowballs at their window. He was motioning for her to come down. She put on some shoes and went out on the porch and told Marcus it was beautiful and thanks for the snow angels but she didn’t want to get cold and wet. He yelled back up at her…yelled, at quarter to eight in the morning, in the middle of a big apartment complex…“Lauren, come on, this hardly ever happens! Come on!” And he just stood and looked at her like, “How can you not come out and play in the snow?”

The sight of him standing there with a crust of snow on his clothes, a ridiculous stocking cap too small for his head, and a big grin on his face was too much for her. She went back in and threw on three layers of clothes, gloves, and a hat. She took the lid off a big plastic storage bin so they could use it as a sled and she went back out on the porch. Marcus had his back turned, making alterations to his snowman, so she scooped up some snow from the edge of the porch and made a snowball. She threw it and it hit the target, right between his shoulder blades. He turned around and looked up. “All right! Come on!”

And they spent the next three hours making more snowmen and more snow angels and sledding down the slope next to their apartment building and then they got into a snowball fight with the neighborhood kids and Marcus chased Lauren and tackled her in the snow (very gently though, she was pregnant you know) and gave her a facewash and they laughed until their ribs hurt and she vowed revenge and then somebody found a sled and they tied it to the back of Marcus’s pickup and he had the kids take turns as he pulled them around the empty church parking lot next door and then the kids moved on to build a snow fort and Marcus and Lauren went for a walk and talked and held gloved hands as they looked at the snow.

They got back to their apartment and stomped the snow off their boots and went inside and peeled off the extra layers of sweaters and jackets. Lauren made hot cocoa. Marcus opened to Ecclesiastes and read a passage out loud…

“Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the days of your vain life that he has given you under the sun, because that is your portion in life and in your toil at which you toil under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 9:9).

He walked over to her in the kitchen and hugged her from behind. “It’s not so vain when I’m with you.”

More about Marcus Redding’s journey of faith next week.