Everyday Life: In Sunlight

It's amazing what a little sunshine can do.

I felt like a wreck last week before we left Chicago.

I believe the best word to describe it was desperate -- and I just left it hanging out there, my last written words of the week.

The morning sickness, the fatigue, the overwhelming emotions, the anxiety -- it all seems like it was exasperated by the cold and the dark and the dreary of early February in the midwest.

But here it's all soothed by sunlight and warm and slumber.

And, I think, by being together and just being.

The little gifts are actually the big ones, and it's astonishing how much that reality is magnified right now in my heart.

I've already had to stop myself from trying to find a way to stay here in this bliss instead of boarding a plane home in a week ... reminding myself to live intentionally in the moment, reminding myself to drink in gifts as they are given. 

This week is for drinking in gifts.

And praising boldly for gifts given

one by one by one. 

Everyday Life: On Vacation

 

"As the sun on summer days gladdens us with beams more warm and bright than at other times...so is it with the mercy of God; it hath its golden hours; its days of overflow, when the Lord magnifieth his grace."  - Charles Spurgeon

One glorious week spent beneath August sun on the sands of a tiny lake in Michigan, and I find myself full.

Full from a feast of gladness.

Every now and then we have to get brave

and brake

in order to break up this steady daily rhythms of the rushrushswoosh of time.

Every now and then

{despite the pull to just keep swimming through the currents}

life needs to be interrupted by

waves gently sweeping over sandy beach

toes immersed in clear water

laughter erupting from little lips

crickets singing in the crisp air of dusk

whispers uttered beneath stars, amid burning embers.

And then

like the golden summer light of August, of summer making way to fall

mercy begins to drip thick

like honey from a hive

as the heart hears

and the eyes see

and the lips confess

all of the small and beautiful blessings

we breeze over in the day to day

but realize in full

when we brake

and break

from the spin cycle of the everyday.

Everyday Life: Songbird

There is this songbird heart tucked inside my chest, that's always beckoning me to fly away in search of more.

More beauty.

More lovely.

More warmth.

There is never an open arm embrace with dwindling day light and my heart; I never fall gently into cooler days turned cold and colder days turned gray.

So I fly.

When winter spreads itself out across the gray of skies for months on end, I fly away.

I fly hard and far and deep, straight into heavy sunshine, thick like honey oozing from its hive.

Every February, I fly and land safely in the nest of my snowbird-grandparents aside the gulf waters in Fort Myers and I breathe out the cold and let color seep onto my face beneath wide open blue skies and wide open turquoise water.

A friend said February always brings out the restless in her heart, too, in a different but oh-so-same way, I think.

Her words gave clarity to what I've been doing each winter for the past six years as I make my cold-weather exodus to the promised land.

As much as I love home, family, friends, the life we've built, my heart always must be dragged away from the warm oasis by the sea by an equally unwilling body stuck with a too-reasonable mind that whispers that I cannot join the branches of the other warm-weather birds who hold out until the warmest of sun beckons them home.



Because the Son beckons me back first.

He calls me back to the everydayness that is interspersed with sweet frustration and overwhelming fullness and crazy-running-into-spring cold snaps that melt into blooms.

We traveled two entire days through the south, watched tropical bloom fade and signs of midwestern spring blossom before our very eyes before we landed at my mom's house in countryfield Illinois late last night.



Cold winds still sweep through the midwest, rustle barren trees.

But the sun is stronger than when I left three weeks ago, lighting up the prairie longer each day.



I am an early songbird returning home to the grass-and-snow-checkered ground, my song singing of the colors creeping north and the daylight seeping into more and more of the dusks and dawns.

This songbird heart sings of spring spreading out over taking the winter from branches of naked trees.

But it sings of spring, nonetheless, because it's coming.

Everyday Life: And We're Off

Today the boys and I are beginning our trek to sunny Fort Myers for a few weeks to spend some time together, with John and with my grandparents.


During the next few days, we'll be roadtripping down to the sunshine state with my grandpa as my co-pilot, {Or maybe main pilot} so if we come to mind, would you pray for us to have a safe journey and travel in the gentle flow of God's grace and goodness?



If you'd like to follow our trip, you can catch me on Facebook, Instagram and sometimes Twitter. And I'd love the interaction while roadtripping to sand and sun!