grace for the gray days

 

It’s here. That long stretch of winter that is January and February, gray and thick and cold like murky pond water. Not a breath of wind stirs the fog from the valley; the mountains are shrouded beneath it like huge sleeping bodies. The trees are silent sentries, bony as skeletons, lifeless and still. It’s cold like death, in a way that makes every pain and fear in my heart throb harder.

So I stop, and in the dismal gray of winter I choose to find grace.

Grace: that God has given us His Word, and that daily I’ve been able to make time for its chapters. That I have a community of friends who are also believers and are reading alongside me, day by day, with a goal of having read the whole Bible by June. That words millennia old can still be relevant to me, here, now. That God is sovereign and good even when it doesn’t feel like it.

Grace: that I have a healthy brain and the will to use it. That I got to finish high school, to devour college-level algebra with A++ scores even though math is my weak subject, to spend a year studying the Bible. That even now I can choose to learn nearly anything because the Internet is available to me. That my brother and sister showed me a site called Duolingo, where I have learned 95 German words in only a few days and can speak in the sentences of a foreign tongue better than I could after a whole year of high school Spanish. That when God scattered the people and confused the tongues at Babel, He paved the way for words like “Entschuldigung,” which I can’t even say without smiling.

Grace: that my sister and I are such friends, and that even when swamped by her homework, she makes the time to watch an episode or two of Once Upon a Time with me in the evenings. That she understands my movie references and that we feud over whether Rumplestiltskin or Captain Hook is the more awesome villain, but are both in wholehearted agreement about the epicness of Loki and Darth Vader.

Grace: that I can run, jump, lift, and work out without getting exhausted. It wasn’t always that way; there have been whole chunks of my adult life when I was too sick and too weak to do much of anything without severe repercussions. But in the past few weeks I’ve found, finally, an energy that I haven’t had for a long time, and with it has come a joy in hard work and an optimism and confidence for every other area of my life.

Grace: that I have been blessed in so many ways, that God has orchestrated my life perfectly so that my path would cross with the paths of untold others who would have huge impacts on my life. That He made a young man perfectly imperfect enough to fit perfectly into my own imperfections. That He chose my parents and my siblings so that I would be molded into who I have become, that He sent me to Florida to meet the roommate I needed most so that I could later be changed by a community of other believers in PA who still give me prayer, counsel, happy memories, and many smiles from 2,500 miles away.

Grace. Grace that He knows all. That He cares about all. That He is the Source of joy, and that His love will never let me go.

grace, weekly

Grace.

Unmerited favor.

I started a small record of day-by-day blessings a few months ago. The little things, like Pennsylvania fireflies or an email from Hannahstasia. Things that made me laugh or smile or look to the presence of my God. I have been training my thinking to look for the good in a flawed world, the blessings despite a cursed nature, the completely undeserved moments of joy that come when I am spirit-sensitive to the hand of God—and I have been amazed at how such a seemingly small change of perspective has opened the floodgates of God’s grace into my life. Nearly every day, I find myself on the verge of tears at the sheer magnitude and goodness of my God, not because He has made my life perfect—but because He has breathed life into my lungs for another day, because He has resurrected my sin-dead soul, and because He has poured out unmerited blessing upon unmerited blessing into my life, based on His perfect knowledge and control over all.

I already do this daily in my little brown journal, but I am going to start doing a weekly list here on the blog as well—a place where I can give the overflowing cup of my soul a few words and a photo, a place where maybe it can encourage someone else somehow. If any of my fellow bloggers would like to join, I’m including a linkup tool at the bottom of the post. :)

i. the way the light drifts through the turning autumn leaves in southwestern Pennsylvania.

ii. peanut butter fudge ice cream at Ritchey’s Dairy.

iii. the friendship I have been blessed with in these two beautifuls.

iv. time spent with all my friends in Pennsylvania.

Friends who are fully in love with Jesus, who can say with me that they owe Him everything that they are. Erin, Dusty, Logan, Hannah, Janae, Luis, the Johnsons, the Sterns—this is all of you.

v. photo shoots (some still in the works!).

vi. snow in October.

vii. music:

This song is the plea of my soul to my God, set to music. It is the prayer of my every day. It is what I want the definition of my life to be.

viii. words:

[Jim] and the other men with whom he died were hailed as heroes, “martyrs.” I do not approve. Nor would they have approved. Is the distinction between living for Christ and dying for Him, after all, so great? Is not the second the logical conclusion of the first? Furthermore, to live for God is to die, “daily,” as the apostle Paul put it. It is to lose everything that we may gain Christ. It is in thus laying down our lives that we find them.
- Elisabeth Elliot

ix. Bible:

Traveling always makes me reflect on this passage, especially when it’s to temporarily remove the thousands of miles that separate me from people I love. My heart literally pulses with joy at the thought of all my homes being in one place for eternity: at the feet of Jesus.

God is good, all the time.

<center> <a href="http://halliejophotography.blogspot.com/search/label/grace%20weekly" target="_blank"><img alt="Hallie Jo Photography" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjs8JQp9aHkWjN873iY-8FzwCZI8UjVHW7geUKwXxz5Kd12zTgtDJo0sriNWjVzsGlV6s8xbpbR8U53_tj67EvMZmSPTQBx6sacRqLPNITCDC8IkUGEX8o8byBQZYvW9jNLUhpR7W6ldKo8/s207-p-no/" /></a></center>

be still

 

Be still, and know that I am God;
I will be exalted among the nations,
I will be exalted in the earth!
Psalm 46:10

Raphah yada Elohim. Be still, and know that I am God.

My favorite thing about that brief line of Scripture is the very first word, raphah. “Be still.” I used to imagine that as a sudden halt, a midsentence-interruption kind of stillness. But when I actually looked up the Hebrew word, I found that it means something a lot more powerful and relevant to my life: to slacken—to relax.

“Relax! Realize beyond the shadow of a doubt that I am God. No matter what’s worrying you right now, I’m working out a plan in which I will be lifted high in the end.”

This is a reminder I desperately need every single day—especially as this week draws to a close, and with it, the final pages of an eleven-month chapter in my life.

camp, week one

 

I just finished week one of counseling at summer camp. It was a week of living outside my comfort zone and finding out that I actually enjoyed that. It was a week of pouring all that I could into twelve high school girls, each of them struggling and hurting in a different way. It was a week of heartbreak for their pain and joy in their enjoyment. But I think what hit me most was that this was a week of answered prayers. Never have I seen God’s hand move so clearly and awesomely in response to the pleas of His children. So many times I cried out to Him, and so many times I received a response that blew my mind. There were even moments when I honestly didn’t know what or how to pray, but the Holy Spirit spoke into my heart and gave me the words.

I had a short weekend to rest and recuperate and I head back out to the frontlines tonight for another week, this time with junior high kids. I’m so excited for what God is going to do!

quiet, quiet

 

Listen to this song.

My life up until Tuesday was the first 23 seconds of that song. Constant rushing and noise, never a pause to stop and think or stop and listen. I figured being a full-time Bible student meant somehow that my communication line with God was open—after all, I spend at least 20 hours a week solely in His Word, and another several doing ministry. So I continued to pack my schedule with activities, and the one Person who never got an appointment was God.

Then 0:24 happened. Everything came to a screeching halt and somewhere through the teeth-gritting pain I heard Him saying, “Quiet, quiet.” Now I’m in a splint and on crutches for the next several weeks, and my life by necessity has significantly slowed down—and I can finally hear Him. This is the definition of blessing. Not that God gave me something I’ve had on my Christmas list, but that God gave me something that is drawing me back to my relationship with Him.

yes

 

Isn’t it pretty awesome when you ask God for something, and He answers with a decided “Yes”?



This week I learned something about when God says yes.

His yes doesn’t always sound like yes. Sometimes it sounds more like si or ja or oui, or even oo. It’s still an affirmative, but it doesn’t sound the way we expected it to—it’s not quite our native language.

You see, I spent most of the past week at the county fair, where I show lambs. I asked God from the bottom of my heart to give me opportunities to share Him with others. When I asked, I was thinking along the lines of giving someone a tract, or feeling God put a complete stranger on my heart. That was my version of “Yes.”

God’s was different. I didn’t understand it at first; it was like another language. I didn’t get any out-of-the-blue tug toward a stranger. I didn’t randomly give out tracts. But I did find a million opportunities to be joyful when I would rather have been crabby. I did get the “What are you doing after you graduate?” question a lot, and found it an amazing chance to explain that I’d like to go to Bible school to learn about my Lord. And I got a completely unexpected chance to explain the Wordless Book to someone.

It reminded me of something I learned in church about this verse:

According to my pastor, this command in the original language doesn’t just mean go; it means while you’re going. So even though walking out of the house with the sole purpose of sharing the Gospel can be an amazing way to do it, there are also countless opportunities to share the Gospel when you’re heading out into day to day life. The keys for me were 1) to pay attention when the opportunities arose and 2) not to downplay my opportunities as “lesser” just because they weren’t sudden and unmistakable.

So that’s my latest lesson in foreign language. :)

good-bye, time

Okay, I know it's October first. The very thought makes me want to scream! I've had to let so many activities (including blogging, obviously) go for the sake of school. I'm sure I won't regret my diploma when I get it, but at the moment, it's very frustrating.

I really will try to do better. I used to be able to post every few days on our desktop computer at home. Two major changes: I have a laptop now, and I no longer have two to three hours to spend waiting for my pictures to load on dial up. :(

September was an interesting month. I started attending half a day's classes at the high school in Goldendale, so rather than being home schooled full time I'm taking 2 college classes and 2 high school classes. Going to the public school has been a big change for me, but I love adventures and I love people, so it hasn't been too hard.

The good news is that I'm still taking pictures! And who wouldn't be in the gorgeous golden light of autumn?

Look at the background...

About six of these mule deer were grazing with the horses. :)

I played with this picture to get a feeling of vastness and just to make it look cool. Then I added another picture to it as a design for a book cover:

I LOVE designing book covers!!

There's a certain shadow across the face of Mr. Adams this time of year as the sun shifts position a little further south.

 My beautiful Drem, grazing in a patch of wildflowers. Does it get any better?

Here's a sepia of our copious quantities of hay. With all the rain we got last spring, the farmers in the area got a bumper crop, including us. Sadly, there aren't as many buyers are there are tons of hay! And we lost our best hay--second cutting orchard grass--to the early September rains. But God always knows what he's doing!! Happy October!!!

 Joel 2:23

"Be glad, O people of Zion,

rejoice in the LORD your God,

for he has given you

the autumn rains in righteousness.

He sends you abundant showers,

both autumn and spring rains, as before."

please pray . . .

. . . For my kitty, Lenny. He was in a bad fight a week or two ago and seems to have a tail or back injury that has him in a lot of pain all of a sudden. He's been hiding since yesterday morning (cats don't like to be bothered when they don't feel good . . .), so we can't even find him to take him to the vet. We suspect something is broken, out of joint, or possibly abscessed.

So if you think about it . . . I would really appreciate prayer for Lenny's safety and healing.

Thank you all so much. :)