Fog

We have been socked in with seven days of fog here on the Puget Sound. The kind that hangs wet and freezes on the branches soaking the cedar planks of the deck even though it hasn’t rained.

How appropriate. I am at the point in my novel where I am writing the climax. I have been preparing to write this scene for the past few weeks, developing the crisis that launches the realization and decision, planning the setting and sharpening characterization. It only took thirty minutes to write the first draft–the scene became clearer as I wrote, and it fell into my lap with ease.

I find it ironic that I wrote it in the fog, an atmosphere of obscurity. There’s a metaphor here. Sometimes we are surrounded by events that cloud our view, but we clearly see what’s important.

This coincidence hasn’t gone unnoticed. Turning points are often painful, but in the gentle mist of a dense fog, wrapped in a world that invites reflection, beauty exists. As a child, I never thought of the brutal, frightening anguish in the Garden Gethsemane. I only saw the angels around our Lord.