happy spring + goals for a new season

 Photos taken at Priest Point Park, Olympia, Washington.

It seems like winter has been eternal this year. If it had been a proper winter, with long stretches of frigid clear days and blankets of snow, I don't think it would have bothered me... but no, it was a western Washington winter, and not only that but the wettest western Washington winter in decades (at least). Rain and gray for months on end has worn me out.

But yesterday and the day before we got just a hint of springtime, with sunshine in patches and temperatures in the 60s. Sam and I hiked at Priest Point Park and strolled through downtown Olympia and worked in the yard and it was like I finally started to break free of a winter-long depressive state. It is time to make things new.

Goals, spring 2016:

- spring clean my life

- plant a lot of flowers

- get involved in women's ministry at church

- get my name out there

- go hiking as many weeks as there's sunshine to do so

- line edit my book

- actively love my church family

- listen to a hermeneutics/Bible lecture every day

- keep doing daily yoga

- balance my eating habits

- get a lot of fresh air and exercise

- get out of my comfort zone

nisqually national wildlife refuge

 

These first October days have been sunny and sweet. Sam and I have been housebound by sickness all week, yet just seeing the sunshine filtering through the windows and the yellowing maple leaves in the backyard has been delightful. Today, finally well enough to go out, we took a leisurely stroll down the boardwalk at Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge, soaking up fall colors and a big sky and a rare view of Mt. Rainier.

And about the heron… I’ve been trying to capture a Great Blue Heron for years on camera. We get them in the swamp at home sometimes, but they’re very, very skittish and I’ve never been at the right place and right time. I saw this heron at a distance, but it was well beyond the public access part of the refuge and I don’t have a 600mm wildlife lens, so I moved on. Not even ten minutes later it just so happened to fly across the marsh and land like ten yards away! I was able to move in close enough to easily fill the frame just using my 135mm lens—not a very shy bird. :) Definitely a day of triumph on the camera front!

i can’t find the words

 

I’m not sure I’ve ever found writing so hard. Even to put down a few feeble sentences, I have to shut off my computer monitor so I won’t have to see how stupid the words look coming from my fingertips. Once, I could fill whole notebooks with a dull-tipped pencil that didn’t even have an eraser, never questioning the worthiness of a single sentence. I thought I was supposed to be good at this... were my eyes closed when the synonymy of “ability” and “ease” broke?

time hurts

 

I wish I could bottle up that smell, that beautiful combination of tilled earth and fruit blossoms, of prairie winds and fresh dew. It’s the smell of walking to the irrigation field at sunrise and of jeans wet to the hip from trudging through tall hayfields. It’s the smell of crisp blue skies held up by white mountain pillars on every corner. It’s the smell of home, a smell that transports me back to a strange amnesic state in which the last several years are erased—in which I fully expect to open the front door and find all four of my siblings still at home, Amy still a toddler, and Lenny still alive.

Time hurts today.

grace, weekly // 3

 

i. cold, blustery days when the sun pours through dense cloud banks like melted butter and the fields are coming alive with tender shoots of winter wheat.

ii. tools like Penzu and Week Plan.

I love being organized. There is nothing like checking things off my to-do list!

iii. tiny droplets of color in a world turning gray.

iv. my home in the fall.

I missed it last year.

v. awesome people like Teresa of the Meadowbrook Farm blog, who gave her time and breathtaking talent to do engagement pictures for me and Sam this weekend.

(Obviously I did not take any of the below pictures… they’re all Teresa’s. Go see some more. You’ll be hooked!)

vi. music:

Favorite line: “I’ve never felt more found than when I’m lost in You.”

vii. words:

“I realized that the deepest spiritual lessons are not learned by His letting us have our way in the end, but by His making us wait, bearing with us in love and patience until we are able to honestly pray what He taught His disciples to pray: Thy will be done.”
-Elisabeth Elliot

viii. Bible:

I know how to get along with humble means, and I also know how to live in prosperity; in any and every circumstance I have learned the secret of being filled and going hungry, both of having abundance and suffering need. I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.
Philippians 4:12-13

The latter verse is one of the most-quoted in the Bible—a favorite motto among every set of Christians. Who doesn’t like some supernatural strength? But as I was reading this passage in my Bible, a deep theological truth occurred to me: Philippians 4:13 comes immediately after Philippians 4:12.

Elementary? Perhaps. But fundamental? Absolutely.

This passage doesn’t give us license to say “I can jump off the edge of the Grand Canyon and promptly sprout wings because Christ strengthens me.” Or even, “I can become a world-famous photographer within the next two years because Christ strengthens me.” Both of those put the focus on me—what I can achieve, what I can accomplish, how I can get the esteem of others and the satisfaction of my temporal desires.

The real message of the passage is this: “I can joyfully accept whatever life circumstances God chooses for me, because I know that my life is not about me—it’s about Jesus.”

The secret of contentment is Christ.

 

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home is

 

Home is not what I thought it was when I first left it in August 2012. Since then I have lived in several places—some for a few days, some for months—and with each, my definition of home has been chiseled and carved and reshaped. I used to think that home was the dirt you’d walked on since childhood, the rooms of the same house and the smells of the same food. I used to think only one place could ever be home. But when I went back to my “one place” after a year away, I still felt… homesick.

Someone has said it before me, and many will learn it after me. Home is not a place; home is people. Home is when you know you can leave, be gone for days or weeks or months or years, and when you come back your place is still there among the people who love you, just as if you had never left. Not that people don’t change—they do. But somehow your relationships hold fast anyway.

I have multiple homes, and one of them is the Stern family in Martinsburg, Pennsylvania. :)