Rejoice: A Seedling Sown

I woke up to sunlight streaming in through our front windows on New Year's Day, bright and beautiful and warm.

And if I didn't know by the chill of cold feet and frost on the windows or date on the newly flipped calendar, I would have thought it summer by only looks.

But the ground is clearly frozen beneath a hard layer of snow and bright blue January skies and the tiniest of buds won't pop through the soil until March. And most of the harvest won't be reaped until late summer.

I can't see the harvest yet; I don't know what it will look like. But I know God is good, and I know harvest comes, and I know seasons change. He gives fruit in season.

On the first of January, the sun was a burning, blazing reminder that the day will come when warmth returns -- that the harvest season will come.

I woke up to sunlight streaming through our front windows on New Year's Day, bright and beautiful and warm

and two clearly pink lines coloring the white background of a pregnancy test, confirmation that a seed has been sown deep inside my body late this fall.

And on the first day of January, those pink lines coupled with the sun, shining and bright, sparkled in hope that the day will come when warmth returns -- that the harvest season will come.

A reminder that seed sown routinely results in fruit gathered from the soil

and

the womb.

So we rejoice!

We celebrate the Gardener; we celebrate the seed.

And we believe in the goodness of a Gardener

who gifts us fruit in season.

Everyday Life: Belief

While John romped around in muddy fields chasing birds Saturday afternoon, the boys and I began ushering in the Christmas season by decking the halls.

G is totally and utterly convinced that decorating for the holidays includes cleaning the house and rearranging furniture. And that belief? I hope it never dies. The boy at four can move the couch across the living room with little to no help. Think of the serious muscle power I'm going to have around here two years from now.

I vacummed, G moved furniture and E stacked Duplos to the tune of classic carols.

We mused about Santa Claus and he said he was concerned about the bearded one getting it since we have no chimney.


G announced the rounds we'd make during Christmas, and he wanted to count the days until Christmas on the Advent calendar but I broke it to him that the popup book he was looking at started with a 12-day countdown.

And I stopped and cried, like I always do, when God is With Us drifted beautifully into my ears with its resounding, echoing hope and reality revealed against the chords of a welling piano.

Of course, G noticed, well, everything, so we brewed hot tea and poured chai and talked about why we celebrate the birth of baby Jesus and why that little swaddled babe born in a manager changes everything.

I see the threads of understanding beginning to weave together in his heart, overlapping and underlying and embracing all of what he's so far encountered; goosebumps sweep over my skin when I think about how his little mind is forming the foundations of belief his heart will hold most dear, the faith his soul will cling to, the love and grace and beauty that will wind itself up tightly in his chest.

And I hope it never unwinds.

"Hold onto what you believe in the light when the darkness has robbed you of all the light." {Mumford and Sons}