december, a list

eating:
ice cream. all the ice cream.

loving:
precious time spent reading the Bible and praying with my husband.

reading:
the second draft of my “book,” which I finished at last a few weeks ago.

listening to:
rain on the skylight nearly every hour of every day.

watching:
NCIS and lately re-watching Downton Abbey in preparation for the new season in January.

exercising:
almost exclusively with weights, and gosh it makes me hungry.

making:
scotcheroos for Christmas. I can’t believe it’s coming so soon.

waiting:

for snow. where are you, snow?

missing:
the sense of being home. I never thought I’d lose that permanently when I moved away to Florida three years ago.

working on:
a whole lot of personal growth and a list of things I want to learn in 2016.

thankful:
that God gives us a picture of Himself in His Word. That He didn’t leave us with a textbook or a history book or a novel, but with a self-portrait of His character.

praying:
for the wisdom to discern between grace and laziness, between truth and harshness, between sound debate and meaningless division.

Merry Christmas to all.

even now, in death

“Even now, in death, You open doors for life to enter; You are winter.” – Nichole Nordeman, “Every Season”



We serve a God who makes the dead come alive.

the first frost

 

Last night was our first real frost. It’s strange to me, not having a frost until so late in the year. In Goldendale this would have happened weeks ago.

Nevertheless, with the world adorned in diamond-dust I could not refrain from going out into the chill to take pictures, struck by how the hand of death can look so icily beautiful until the sunlight hits it.

I’ve been absent lately. Not just from this page but also mentally, somehow. I’m always thinking, but these days my thoughts seem shaky and disorganized, and there are so many things calling for my attention that it’s hard to grab hold of any real mental study. I am almost finished with the second draft of my writing project, but these last thousand words or so have been twice as hard to pin down as the 40,000 that precede them. Like climbing Mt. Adams, the most frustrating and mentally excruciating part of the climb seems to be the very end, when the finish is so close you can almost taste it.

I have been convicted, too, of the many unwarranted places I’ve been putting my energy. No one who knows me will be surprised that these places are called Worry, Stress, Perfectionism, and Fear. Reading the first few chapters of Leviticus brought me to the appalling realization that very little in my life do I consciously dedicate to the Lord, let alone publicly; that my prayers of thanks ring hollow because I distrust God’s ability to provide in the future the way He has in the past and the present. When I walk to the doorway of the tent of meeting with my sacrifice, it’s a small and stingy one reflective of a closed-fisted heart, and I am too proud to lay my hand on its head and and let go.

My cosmos blooms are not the only thing held in the vice-grip of the frost.