Last week, The Husband pulled out of the driveway a couple of hours before The Mom pulled in. He was headed out on a work trip–to Florida–and she was headed here to hang out with The Kid and me. The next day all hell broke loose here in Atlanta and across the Southeast as Winter Storm Leon dumped a paltry couple of inches of snow that brought life to a standstill.

The day after that was when TH was meant to return and The Mom was meant to leave, but that’s not what happened. Instead, our long regional nightmare was just beginning as children slept in schools, adults slept at work and in their cars on the side of the highway (prompting my forever-question: How did they pee–OR MORE?!), and The Mom and I gave thanks for a pre-emptive Tuesday-morning fill ‘er up session at Total Wine.

Of course TH was “stranded”, of all places, in West Palm Beach. But as I heard about the ordeals experienced by so many, my typical ever-ready resentment was reduced to occasional catty comments by thankfulness that he was safe (though trapped in dirty clothes), TK was safe (though stir-crazy), and the rest of our family was safe (though running out of wine).

I remember when this happened three years ago: snow piled outside, ice locking us inside. The experience is much different with a halo-wearing two-year-old, and sans a husband.

But it melted, as snow and ice do, and on Friday The Mom pulled out of the driveway a couple of hours before TH pulled back in. The next night, I headed out on clear roads with a friend to hear one of her friends, a blogger with a ministry to teenage girls, speak at a local church. For reasons that are hers, my friend encountered a bout of nostalgia upon entering the church, and on the way there we talked about that particular kind of emotional invasion brought on by a place that holds difficult memories. For me, that place is one Birmingham, Alabama. I lived there for a decade spanning the ages of seventeen to twenty-seven, the bridge into adulthood. A bridge I stumbled over, built plans upon, cursed regularly. When a city feels like it’s become your nemesis, it’s time to leave–and that’s when I hatched the plan to escape to New York.

But it wasn’t Birmingham that was the problem; the battle was internal and I just didn’t realize it. All around me, friends were moving on with their lives in the ways I had envisioned for myself: getting engaged, married, settling down into grown-up homes and relationships. Meanwhile, I dealt with the crumbling of my self-constructed Perfect Student/Sweet Girl identity in the form of a rebellion that left me full of regrets. When you feel like you’ve become your own nemesis, it’s time to get counseling.

I look back now at those two years of counseling as a turning point. They were painful and strenuous; I confronted truths about myself that required a response, which is always difficult for someone whose dealings are conducted primarily through fear. But it was in that room, every few weeks, that I received the push I needed to venture northeast. And it was in the gardens and on the hilltops of that city where I learned that crying out is a valid form of prayer; in fact, it’s one of the most honest. My language toward God, because it hadn’t yet been informed by grace, was one of tears and whys, clinging and being forced to let go.

It’s so much harder to be all Mary about things (“May it be to me as you have said”) when Option B: The Eve Response is available (“But I wanted THAT apple!”). I suspect that a misunderstanding of the character of God may be at play?

So many of the whys have been answered now. But the bigger thing is that I’ve come to a point where I can live without the why, because the Who and the How are more important, and both are found in grace. And just like that (“just” = decades later), the journey is transformed from a solo venture marked by bouts of fighting reality into a joint trip through which I learn the meaning of Emanuel. It is grace alone that shows me how to stop seeing only what isn’t (Eve) and opens my eyes to all that is (Mary). I am not trapped; I am placed.

Saturday night, sitting beside my friend, I thought about my own extended teenage years: the insecurity and loneliness, the feeling of being trapped in a city or a circumstance. And I know, now, that it’s not about immobility but about the grace in a moment, in a season. I missed it then, always scrambling to get to the next thing, but now I am learning not about being snowed in but about being still. About the beauty that can be harvested when I’m looking for more than a lesson but instead am just looking. Waiting for a car to pull into the driveway, waiting for the halo to come off–there is life in the waiting that can be so easily overlooked. The miracle of safety, of this daily reminder that TK has not let anything keep him down, of the healing properties of just being here, with a prime view as TK becomes himself, white turns to green, and the ice just always gives way to reveal life underneath.