Like the Dawn

It is winter here and there is solace in these sleep warmed sheets as the alarm beside me sounds off like gunfire forcing me along to my next assignment. The creaks and groans of the bed are synchronized with my movement as if to voice its disapproval with me leaving a cold, body shaped indention where a warm body used to lie. My eyes make a few tired blinks to work out the sleep and I respond quietly to the bed's groans.

"I don't like it anymore than you," I think to myself.

My wife is sleeping just inches away as I lean to kiss her before my feet make their final descent to the wooden floor below.

My toes make first contact with the frostbitten floor and quickly adjust to the coolness it offers. Just a few steps validate there will be no stopping the squeaking between the old boards beneath me as I delicately walk to the clothes laid out for work that day. I glace over my shoulder in hopes that this ancient security system of wooden floor boards which never surrender their popping and nudging one another has not awakened my wife, but it has. She smiles at me and reminds me she loves me. I gently close the door as I finish pulling the zipper of my coat to the point where it touches my chin.

Breath pours out like steam from a locomotive as the dry Colorado air seems to pull any moisture it can as it circulates in and out of my lungs. With each step away from my pleasantly outdated, 1960s apartment building the snow crunches to the rhythm of my walking and my eyes tiredly squint as they adjust to the increasing glow of the morning.

Down the block is my car and its neighbors sleeping beneath a blanket of ice and snow; seemingly content as I was in my sheets just a few minutes ago. My thoughts drift to my wife resting within our down comforter and then quickly snaps back as the first motorist of the day passes behind me with a startle and the cracking of fresh ice under the tires. My drivers side door resists my pull as it swings open and the snow sitting on its upper edge falls to cover my seat. I dust it off and sit down. As the key turns in the ignition the engine moves with relucatance as the pistons break free from their casings and ready themselves for work like horses from the stable.

While reaching for the ice scrapper I examine the windows and determine the next ten minutes of my day will be spent waking the neighbors to the melody of my grunting as the battle ensues against the thick layer of ice consuming the car. When the fight was well underway and victory was swiftly approaching it happened, in the most amazing way, the first true light of day. My eyelids were forced again to a sliver as my pupils struggled to accommodate this heavenly light pouring from the eastern horizon and reaching the peaks of the western mountains.

The mourning light began to flood the streets around me bringing its warmth back to the ends of my fingers and coursing hope through my veins. The city began to stir as long casting shadows emerged from their dreaming and the snow glittered down the sidewalks. I stopped the last of the scrapping to marvel at the sun and its light that flowed acrossed the earth, sky and down the mountain side like a paint can tipped from the shelf to spill itself across the floor.

With the ice scrapper in my gloved, right hand and my eyes now fully adjusted and fixed on the sun I whispered quietly so that only someone truly listening may here, "This is how I want to live, as the morning light spills to break the night. This is what I ask for today, to be like the first gleam of dawn."

"The path of the righteous is like this first gleam of dawn, 

Shining brighter till the full light of day."

(Proverbs 4:18)