Done.

I'm sitting here at my kitchen table.
final paper of a long year swift away - just.
grace after grace to make it, and grace finally taking it from my hands.

done. done?

well, for a little while and a break and a breath.
there are dishes in the sink and laundry to be folded - all the 'fun' things that have been in wait until I was 'done'.

After a while - the laundry, the work, and the dishes will fill up the space where papers have filled for 11 months, and I will anticipate the work again after rest. I must learn now to discipline myself not to steal looks at the future, and just rest in now.

I feel like dancing around this tiny apartment,
Or maybe just going to bed.
either would be wonderful.
And Nutmeg just chewed my toe. Ha! It really is just another day, done.

Tonight, I give thanks for:

• two beautiful brides and their grooms.
• finding my heartbeat in sticks.
• brother.
• clean dishes & clothes.
• CORN ON THE COB (I forgot what summer tasted like...wow)

close: dim & warm

walk down a quiet street.
in city dark, dim burning-gold light filtering through thick maples to the street.

the heat is close,
the only breeze from moving forward.
the heat is welcomed and so it holds me like a soft, long hug.


I've longed for summer, and it's July.
I've longed for Christ, and here He is with me in this quiet, close summer night. In the not profound walk home after ice-cream and talks, swings and prayers.

I am thankful for:

• laughing.
• sun.
• focus.
• a workshop.
• a companion.

sufficient

It's likely part my rural upbringing, partly growing up in town and not the farm, and partly being female raised in these places that I battle daily with the calls of 'lazy'.

"Lazy's" threat beckons so many of us from bed each day - anxious not to waste it, anxious that we might really be lazy if we don't make enough of our lives, if we miss the mark. Lazy pins us into a corner of Martha's and lays waste to His gift of grace. It makes me spin with more and more - do and do.

Lazy and productive are not the defining dichotomies of the Christian life.
I found when I moved out on my own (literally, educationally, and professionally), I struggled to define myself in my new space. I used old standby's, like 'doing' and 'lazy' and 'productive' - they helped with getting at the dishes and papers, and a feeling of pride when I'd been successful in accomplishing something. But they left me bearing the weight of their emptiness and negative drag, because I simply could not uphold all of the standards I'd set for myself.

A sinner still, needing His grace to accomplish.
"My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness."
~ 2 Cor. 12:9

Slowly, the old and broken of my daily vocabulary is phased out, and I settle for a dealing of His words full of grace, defined in the paradox of Incarnation.

Today, I am thankful for:

• early mornings.
• the tickle of steam on your face with that first sip.
• great women to read about.
• His way of mercy.

sunday morning.

Pearl and I pulled into the drive this morning - back from our yesterday's adventure for friends' shower and dance and party.

I come into the house - loaded with bags.
And unload the burdens.

In here, I sit in a worn chair.
They've gotten some new ones too since I've been away.

I hear familiar sounds. An old creaking fan, the dog's tail thumping as she chases frogs in her sleep, our grandfather clock ticking away the bounds of Sunday.
And outside, I mostly hear birds and nothing but pre-storm breezes, and the occasional car through the village - maybe a lazy lawnmower breaking Sunday's quiet.

Sunday's have been my favorite days.
Collective sleepiness of Christians and small communities.
Everyone walks slower - talks longer.
Strangers rest in stares and smiles in parking lots.
We sip coffees, and silence.
We turn pages slow.
We find cozy blankets, and windowsills lit with gentle Sunday light - and sleep.

Today, I am thankful:

• for face to face.
• T & M and one month.
• M's nap.
• J's stories.
  

around all the letters

...on a page of type and words, there is white.

White is all of colour combined. Whole as He is whole - He is in all things, and through all things, and is all things - He holds all things together.

! I am in the final weeks of a policy course before a few months of break - then there will be less discourse on written word which has been long-holding a prominent place in my schedule, hehe ...

But, looking at a page of words, I've been thinking about how I've found myself pretty absorbed in the marks that spot the page of life - on the quality and number of letters, and how they are arranged. Those things aren't anything without the page - they have no place or meaning without a page to be written upon.

It seems basic (acutally, it's fundamental) remembering the Page lives are written upon; God in the white space around my marks, the white showing up the dark of a life script - the margins giving place, the white giving them sense and showing up mispellings and grammatical error.

Today I'm thankful for:

• His mercy.
• a place.

The last two

Life in the past few days has been like, the sigh after hard work.

I don't want to make an idol of Rest - in fact, don't want to think that I should need or enjoy more the specific things I write here, more than I need Him.

Alternatively, I do not want to shirk the gift of enjoying break. God holds the balance.

It has been so good - I have gotten a little more sleep! A few days of living in what has accumulated - acknowledging it and giving Him thanks for it.

Two days have been full of gift:

• thankful for my twenty-three years, no more, no less.
• thankful for the conviction of sin and of mercy.
• thankful for time to be attentive to 'fearfully and wonderfully made'.
• thankful for storage room reminders to care for my soul as I work with those who suffer.
• thankful for old friends, chatting late into the night with ice cream and tea.
• thankful for enjoying crosswords, vintage hats and music - together, because.
• thankful for sisters praying on the summer grass, and working out His beauty and salvation in their steps.
• thankful to be humbled to listen - to let His words resonate anew, to hear them as if for the first time.
• thankful to be humbled to speak, and to speak like a child. His child.

May "the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit."

~ Philippians 4:23

Restful work.

Today, I am writing a massive paper - the last one for my statistics course. It is the culmination of slow progress resulting in new understanding. And I have to admit, at this point, my nerves are a little rattled. I look forward to the rest that is coming, the great gift of rest - the anticpation of rest.
But, I've got admit that I sometimes have the tend to see rest as something empty - you know, like at the end of the semester, when you let all that you've learned fall out of your head as you walk out the door of the exam or as the paper drops from your hand to the desk of your professor.

Rest, rather, is part of completeness, wholeness - the SHALOM of God; it is part of the insitution of His Kingdom, now. I'm thankful that it's meant to be full and restorative, and replenishing - for, in character being so, it honours the work that has been done - the tiny accomplishments made. When God rested on the 7th day of Creation, that day was filled with the fullness of HIM. wow.....

Best yet, rest is not merely a hope deferred until tomorrow evening at midnight (when this lovely paper is sent off to the inbox of my professor). Rather it is now, and it is as inherent and fundamental a drive as work - as I respond, momentarily, to my body's need of water and food and a look out the window.

Rest can be found, in quiet abundance, in the almost imperceptible act of glancing off the computer screen, in the white spaces between words on a page, in the transition between paragraphs and ideas - punctuating work with its gift of space.

• thankful that rest makes us work better.
• that work makes us rest better.
• for cups fresh water.
• for people who have written 10+ page reports full of numbers.
• for greater understanding of what those numbers represent :D.
• for a holy experience

[sleep]

It’s nearly eleven thirty at night, and I have been awake since six with about 4 hours of sleep last night. Sleep. Sometimes, it doesn’t come so easily. I want the day to not end: I just get so excited with what went on in the day that I have difficulty sometimes settling down – quieting my mind and allowing myself rest. Or sometimes, sleep escapes me as I try to make plans for the all 'nexts' and 'to do's' of life. On the same token, sleep is priceless – regenerative. Grad studies, shift work = sleep deprivation (and if you're me, fondness of coffee).
If there is one thing I've learned in sleep deprivation, it is the effect it has on my perspective, mood and cognition. How vital it is for us, how beautifully fashioned, and frankly, how enjoyable when you get down to it :)


Tonight, I am thankful that in a few minutes, after a lazy cup of chamomile tea, I will be tucked into my wee bed - my thoughts and hopes for tomorrow resting in the Hands of the One who creates tomorrow.