In Which I Decide to Stop Thinking and Just Blog (also I resolve to live on the back porch forever and only eat Mexican food for all time)

  I may have jumped the gun a little on the fall decor around here, but we slept with the windows open last night, and I've spent all day without excessive sweating (notice I didn't say NO sweating--that will truly be an atmospheric miracle).  I know that we've still got some hot, indeed sweltering days again, but for right now, I just going to take this kiss of fall, the promise of what I desire, and roll about in it, glorying in the beauty and the promise and the sweet kiss of chill excitement. I can't worry about tomorrow or I might miss what's right here in my lap today.

I've felt very empty lately. Not empty in the barren and used up way, but empty as though I have reached the end of everything that is me, and, finding it inadequate and bumbling, decided that it just isn't worth clinging to any more. Words seem to have escaped me, so I think often of blogging but I never sit down to tap out any words since I question that they would amount to anything at all. Maybe that is good, or not, or maybe it just doesn't matter. I only know that that is where I am today. Emptied of wisdom, pride, resources, desires, expectations...but not friendships. God has a gracefully granted me an abundance of wise and wonderful friends who encourage and speak Truth, whom I trust with the good and a yuk of me. Friends who remind me that "the good thing about empty....it is full of possibilities." Of course the most precious of all, a life companion who somehow embraces the whole of me and makes the good better and the bad not so lonely. Who won't let me stay in the mire of self pity, but makes me climb out and endure the chiseling and shaping that must, simply must, hearken a good work in progress.

I run a lot. Not a lot for some, but for me, A LOT - 10 to 15 miles a week. I'd like to say it lends time for thinking and meditation but truthfully, much of that time is consumed with being: being in the run, being in the pace, being in the breathing, feeling muscles and lungs, fatigue and drawing deeper on strength reserves, listening for the beat of me at the most basic and primal sense. At the heart of the run, I am just me with no strings and no labels, no expectations just a vague and unspoken cadence of "stronger, better, harder, farther" which becomes a kind of meditation when boiled down to its essence. When I return home, I have listened to myself  fully and deeply, and my muscles are surfeited with their own effort and again I am empty leaving me free to focus fully on all that the day holds without the many facets of me that like to get in the way of things.

In the meantime as I sit on the back porch and type these words which at best are light and momentary, and watch as the weather changes from a balmy pre-fall coolness, to a thundering deluge, which holds behind it that promise of open windows and a hint of chill. I know that tonight I will open the windows again and hope for the things I anxiously await, but which may or may not come to pass.  I will be happy in today.

Shiny, Happy Life

Pleasure and joy live in all of the corners and crevices of our life, not just the bright sunlight. We must learn to cultivate pleasure and invite it into all the places of our lives, no matter what else is happening. ~SARK

 I'd like to preface by saying it's been an extremely difficult few weeks. From burning lunch to dropping a brownie pan 5 feet to the ground, to family squabbles to filing bankruptcy it feels like every time I turn around there is something difficult to deal with. What's more, I'm tired of talking about them, thinking about them, dealing with them.

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.

I read these words today in my study of Philippians, and I thought, "This is what I want: these lovely things to surround me physically, to embrace my galloping thoughts and soothe my weary mind. I want the God of Peace to dwell in me."

In my mind I had painted the last year as the "lost year."  Life seemed so reactionary with everything taking us by surprise, everything presenting new challenges, everything a scramble of adjustment. I have since stopped myself from that way of thinking, not because it isn't true but because it isn't fully true. It lacks the lens Philippians 4:8.  It overlooks the good, the beautiful blessings that have sustained me, us, in our hardest year.  These are the events, people and places that will be the balm to my soul.  They are what move me on to be the person that God has promised I will be.

Being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.

Let's see if I can't make my words here reflect the good, lovely, worthy things in my life rather than dwelling that which has come before.