Shoveling Our Way to Freedom: The Consequences of Neglecting Responsibility

We did not grow up around much snow. It’s important to this story that you hold onto that piece of information.

When the snow began to fall, landing soft on the deck that Sunday morning, the thought crossed my mind that we should move the car to the top of the driveway. Our driveway curves around the back of our house, making it one of the longest driveways on our street. As we watched the snow fall throughout the day, we asked the question a couple more times: Should we move the car to the top of the driveway?

Assuming our accumulation of snow would be the lesser of the predicted 6-9 inches, we left the car sitting behind the house at the bottom of the sloping driveway. It was a mixture of laziness and cozy snowfall watching that led to our error in judgement. Rather than take the 5 minutes to move the car, we continued staring outside in wonder at the falling flakes, which provided a peaceful calm over our son during difficult moments.

We didn’t know it then, but our mistake was a costly one.

A Full Foot of Snow Later…

After nearly a foot of snow blanketed our house, we pulled on extra jackets and fluffy socks to venture into the 11-degree weather—you read that correctly, 11 degrees. Our feet sank into the powder up to our calves, and to his delight, our son sank almost up to his hips.

My husband and I grew up in a town where our weather brough us more ice than snow. This was our first experience even laying our own eyes on a full foot of snow. I couldn’t believe our luck at the amount dropped on our doorstep.

A few days into our snowy dream Ryan worried we might need to get out of the driveway, but our car was still parked in back of the house, snow piled up next the wheels. We began by shoveling the snow around the car. I was only outside for about 15 minutes shoveling when a sweat had broken out across the back of my neck and my arms trembled from the weight of carting off piles of snow.

My husband was up next, shoveling the top of the driveway clear. Having seen a neighbor simply drive through the snow on their driveway, we hoped our car could do the same over most of ours. Our car got stuck in the snow not far from where it began to climb. We took turns shoveling two paths in the snow for the tires to pass through. Our backs and arms ached, but when the car finally made it to the top of the driveway, we breathed a heavy sigh of relief.

Keep in mind, this was our first experience ever needing to shovel snow, much less a whole foot of the stuff. We’d never even purchased a snow shovel. If the previous owner of our house hadn’t left hers when she moved, we wouldn’t even have had one to dig our way to freedom. We were woefully unprepared for the sheer amount of snow—we don’t even own a sled!

Let’s Talk About Jonah

In our spiritual lives, we can be as equally unprepared as our family was for the latest snowstorm. When we know God’s called us to do something, but we neglect to take any action toward it or in preparation for it we’ll endure a much harder experience.

Just as we neglected to act on our initial instinct to move the car to the top of the driveway and experienced the back-breaking work of shoveling the whole stretch of asphalt, God allows us to feel the consequences of disobedience. It could be an aching back and blistered, frozen hands, or it could be living in the pitch dark of the belly of giant fish for a few days.

After studying God’s character, I believe He takes no delight in our struggle, in our bearing the consequence of inaction or outright disobedience. In a perfect world we would choose obedience every time and our faith would be a shallow, frail thing, barely able to hold us up when our life is falling to pieces like so many snowflakes in the air.

I’m not advocating for you to walk in disobedience from the Lord, rather to accept your struggles as the testing ground for your faith. A faith built through struggle is the kind of faith that won’t crumble under pressure, or a little snow. When you feel a weariness beyond your years, so distant from God you wonder if He’s even still there, arms trembling from carrying the load, remember our goal is not perfection, but endurance.

Featured photo by Cody Fitzgerald on Unsplash