I suddenly realized that January comes to an end on Sunday. One month into 2010. It doesn’t seem like just another year in a sequence of stagnation. This one is different for some reason. It’s very cold and windy, uncharacteristic even for this area and season. The air is damp and it cuts. The sun is rarely seen. I suppose the gray outside should reflect sadness but that’s not the case. There doesn’t seem to be sadness that I see. The little critters outside the window are not noticing anything either.

As I gathered up my gear this morning, making ready to go out in the dark, something made me stop and pick up my big Bowie knife in its Southern Comfort sheath. There is something stark about a big knife, like it is really threatening all on its own. A hit with it would make a difference in anything.  Perhaps 2010 took a hit from the Bowie and January is getting ready to fall out of it. When the year began, it was just some more days of winter. And then, things began to change or began to happen or just began at all. Very strange when parts of life just shift and you realize that things just are not the same as they were. Events occur, people appear, thoughts are opened up and examined. Those can all be good things and do help to break some of life’s periods of ordinary. But, just in the past week, time became extraordinary.

I find myself (as usual) trying to understand why certain things happen and certain people choose to be in our lives or not. Then “it” – meaning realization – appears out of the confusion to strike with the obvious but impossible answer. Things did not just happen at random, someone didn’t just unthinkingly decide to be here, though whether they remain is of course, up to them and not yet known by me even if I hope that they do stay near. This shift in life, the events of now, the alignment of so many factors just has to have been controlled or guided by some other force. I wonder if that is God.

I have always been of the impression that God would spend His time in South Dakota, as that is where I would be if I were Him. Occasionally, He’d glance across the plains in this direction, but there really wasn’t any kind of communication going on. Life was life and God wasn’t really involved. Now I suddenly find out what happens when He is directly involved and right here right now. That is a lot more power than the aura from a big knife or the muzzle end of a large-caliber handgun.

And as I attempt to grasp this possibility, I remember that what is happening is what I once asked for. I don’t know whether the outcome will be a good thing or a bad thing, but I am responsible for it because I asked for it. Not just a different life, but a real life. And I have learned something, too: Angels have red hair. Really.