thoughts after Christmas

As I wait for my Love to wake up, (on a day off when we're FINALLY at home) I am pondering.

Our Christmas was beautiful this year. It seems to just get better every single year! How grateful I am that we were able to spend it with family, traditions and love! I loved every minute of it!

I had an awesome time in worship at church on Christmas Eve.

My Love got a guitar for Christmas, and practices SO much! It makes me really happy to hear him.

I've had a new-to-me theological thought: leavened communion bread brilliantly reflects the theology of the churches that use it.

How I love '60s kitchenware.

Somehow I've suddenly become aware and very thankful that I was brought up in a home where the free discussion of different and opposing ideas, philosophies and religious and political theories was not considered a faux pas.

Also pondering next year and what it will bring, since all the changes in this past year were completely unexpected.

Pondering all that has changed since last Christmas, and it seems that everything has gotten better for many in our families, including us.

I am grateful not only for the blessings, but also that I am allowed to notice them.

It's odd to think that the desire to be very grown up is childish.

I credit this thought to C. S. Lewis and not my own less inquisitive mind. Still, I am having an interesting time thinking about this thought today.

among other things, an alternate view of Dallas

For whatever reason, it seems that Dallas is way more relaxing when you don't live there. AND when the company puts you up in a lovely hotel where you sleep really well, send your husband off to work in the morning and relax, crochet, drink coffee and paint your nails while you wait for your friend to come and pick you up. That was last Thursday.

This past weekend we stayed in a Dallas hotel again, this time for a dear friend's wedding. It was so much fun. We wore red dresses and got our nails done all together, and I was really, really happy for the couple. My dear Love was amazing, patient, and so sweet in helping me just be there for the bride. He ran errands, brought me breakfast, dropped me off, picked me up, transferred my getting-ready stuff from one hotel to another, and at one point, filled our sink with ice and had champagne waiting for me! He's a love.

Also, we got to have our dog with us this trip. It's so fun to have her in a hotel room, her funny excitement, her wagging tail and her careful jumping up onto the bed.

When the festivities were over and we had checked out of the hotel, we drove through our old neighborhood, past our condo (just to see the "contract pending" sticker over the "for sale" sign) and took our dog for a walk around the little pond where we always used to go. It was a perfect way to end the trip. I hadn't realized until then that there are things about our Dallas life that I really miss, even though Austin already feels like home. Speaking of home, we are finally back in our little apartment, eating tuna, watching football and planning Christmas.

I couldn't sleep.

After several weeks of living under the crippling burden of sickening news, I give up: God is in charge.

Given my patterns of worrying, I believe that sometimes, in varying degrees of smallness. As a fallen being, it is impossible me to see things as they really are. God's perspective is so vastly different from mine, that I can only see what seems to be. In Isaiah 55, God says,

8 “For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways,”
declares the LORD.
9 “As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.

Psalm 33 reinforces the fact that He does exactly as He plans, without letting human devices get in the way.

13 The LORD looks down from heaven;
he sees all the children of man;
14 from where he sits enthroned he looks out
on all the inhabitants of the earth,
15 he who fashions the hearts of them all
and observes all their deeds.
16 The king is not saved by his great army;
a warrior is not delivered by his great strength.
17 The war horse is a false hope for salvation,
and by its great might it cannot rescue.
18 Behold, the eye of the LORD is on those who fear him,
on those who hope in his steadfast love,
19 that he may deliver their soul from death
and keep them alive in famine.

The size of a king's army seems like it would have a lot to do with saving him in battle. But the Lord says it doesn't. He, the Lord, chooses what happens with kings, armies and battles, and every person whose heart He fashioned. Another Psalm says, "Some trust in horses, we trust in the name of the Lord our God. Some trust in chariots, we trust in the name of the Lord our God." Often I live as if so many other things can be trusted in. They can't.

With thoughts and situations more troubling than usual right now, there is nothing I can do but this:

20 Our soul waits for the LORD;
he is our help and our shield.
21 For our heart is glad in him,
because we trust in his holy name.
22 Let your steadfast love, O LORD, be upon us,
even as we hope in you.

It's what I should do all the time.

Isaiah 26 (I can't remember which verse) says, "You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on You, because he trusts in You." Having my mind "stayed on Him" is really difficult at the moment, but on the other hand, there really isn't anywhere else to go. He's the one in charge of the outcome, and I know He can be trusted. I don't know why horrible things happen, but I'm truly grateful to know the One who does.

It's A Wonderful Life

I would just like to say that I love champagne. And the sorts of glasses it comes in. Champagne glasses are as good as or better than what comes in them!



Today is a day with my Love--he is off work, and I don't have to practice. I played some fun old music but did not practice anything!!! And we are drinking champagne and eating cheese and crackers and apples, and watching It's a Wonderful Life.

Champagne while watching a black and white movie is the best. And my Love is the best.

Which Disney Princess Are You?

I took one of those facebook quizzes the other day, and got Ariel. I like The Little Mermaid well enough, and my Love even likes it, because it's a Danish fairy tale. At least, the Hans Christian Anderson version. There might be others, I don't know.

Anyway, the quiz result said these sorts of things about me:

"You are a stubborn, headstrong girl..."

"You would do anything for love, even risk other peoples' health and happiness..."

"You would also do everything you can to correct mistakes and misunderstandings..."

"Deep down, you seek the truth in things and follow your heart."

These are silly little time-wasting quizzes, but what I loved about this one was that my husband completely agreed with everything it said about me. All the things the quiz said about me, he says about me too. I just liked that.

sumptuous

I've been so apathetic about my piano-playing lately. It demands too much energy and emotion to make the notes into music, and I feel I have a tired mind and dry spirit these days. I am always missing my Love, since he's been out of town every week for the past couple of months, and the pressure of recording soon is also taking from me.

Anyway, I just remembered another time in my life when I felt this way, tired and with nothing to give. At that point, I was reading along in the first couple chapters of Lamentations, vaguely wondering what I was supposed to get out of this seemingly boring book. I came to the bottom of the page, just before it was time to turn, and saw this:

But this I call to mind, and therefore have hope:

What a time to turn the page! I was surprised, after I turned, to see these words which I have sung all my life but had not thought about in quite some time:

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;
His mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness. The Lord is my portion, says my soul, therefore I will hope in him.

The Lord is my portion. His sweet mercy of which I need so much, is new every morning, and belongs to me! He shares Himself with me- his creativity that spun huge galaxies and the intricacies of a Bach fugue, his mind that imagined sunsets, hunger and food, the richness of romance, chocolate, pumpkin rum pound cake and caramel apples. When my soul is dry, He is never lacking in beauty for my eyes and spirit, and love for my heart, and usually, even rich, lovely physical food.

He brought me to his banqueting table and His banner over me is Love. ~Song of Solomon 2:4



He is rich in all good things, and we are a part of those things if we stand under the blood of Jesus as God's children. Being included in and invited to goodness and good things reminded me of that picture so much.

And since He is rich in all that, I don't have to find it in myself, because honestly, I just can't. So when I play the piano and it comes out lovely and not dry, I know it's from Him and not me.

Singers and dancers alike say, "All my springs are in You." ~Psalm 87:7