Friday

Seems as if the whole of everything that I know is taking a break.  And that's a good thing.  I woke up to a very beautiful, cold day.  The pool has ceased in it's leaking as it waits for finishing touches, everything I needed for the day ahead was ready and waiting for me in the kitchen.  Two children slept in their beds and the youngest 4 legged child set contently in his place, the one he has come back to.  The place that always signaled safety and that all was well.  Everyone, everything, in their proper place.  This day, in years past, has signaled finality for me.  An ending and then a moving into something new.  13 years ago, this day signaled a completion of writing that took me a year.  It was the first time He had asked me to put my words down and then share them.  It was the first time I wrote by computer instead of pen and paper.  It came on the heels of a calling.  I printed it all out and deposited each copy to it's proper place.  Each heart I would share mine with.

Now as I look back over this past year, a year of hard, I also see a year of simply amazing.  He called me back to blogging after a year of hard.  Write it down.  Share.  And indeed I have and this has been something I never dreamed it would be.  I feel like He is putting the finishing touches on this chapter, this continuation.  And one seems to build upon the last, picking up where it left off, the way children often do when they walk away and then come back to something....

As I read yesterday, God spoke to me in such a way.  I asked for answers.  He gave them.  And tears that I have long since given up fighting came.  I questioned Him....seriously, do I have a dysfunctional tear valve in there somewhere?!....He reminded me of something...as His joy as made full in me He doesn't fill me to only half way or just enough, He fills to overflowing.  Those tears are my overflowing.  And at times when my tears come in torrents of despondency and confusion and sorrow, it's the breaking of what was and the spilling out of things I should not hold, so He can remake and refill.  Time after time after time.....it's just the way He made me.

So the verse yesterday, the reminder....Psalm 37....

25 Through my whole life (young and old),

    I have never witnessed God forsaking those who do right,

    nor have I seen their children begging for crumbs,

26 Because they are always giving and sharing;

    truly, their children are a joyful blessing.

My children.  These two that have been my miracles and saving grace.  These two that have been with me every minute of every day for the past 17+ years.  I have never, ever, ever seen my children want.  In the hardest of times, when loss seemed to overtake us, still even then, He has provided.  Always.  And so as this time of year circles back around, this year is so very different.  We are gathered, we are set in a family, we are steeped in the truth that has always been, but we rarely took time to truly embrace.  And for all of this, all of what has been, all of what is to come, I am reminded again to be, truly, thankful.