This Time of Lovingkindness

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Your Spot

Do you have a spot in your home where you can look out and SEE the goodness of God? Tonight I gaze out of my new office window and I see a green field flanked by a white pillar. Above the field as the trees gather their branches to the window's top, a layer of brown, pink, and blue draw the eye up and heavenward. Somehow the passing cars and the power lines get lost in the color and form, and they matter not. This is gift. God himself beckons.

He calls my attention to the beauty of the night's entrance, the day's slow, but unmissable fading. 

What mercy!

How are you getting on in these days?

Yes, indeed, they are strange times, of questions, of stopping, of togetherness and loneliness, of what is going on anyway? Can I go out? What to do with another hour? And the kids...or the silence.

Not one of us lives today like another soul. We live it as ourselves. With ourselves and with our God. He knows. 

So I ask again: how are you getting on? Maybe pause right now, close your eyes, and say it, aloud or to yourself: how are you REALLY doing?

In thought or feeling...spiritually or physically...this is your heart. 

Moments

If you're like me, then maybe you catch yourself pouring out a whole lot for others during the daytimes (which seem like year-long moments). Time is strangely irrelevant. Weather tells me if and how I will get outside. Lent and Easter...well, I think they were close but I'm not sure anymore. (#EasterCandyCrisis anyone?)

Each day is different or maybe each day predictably the same. People need things because school is on hiatus and work is now in new space. Whatever rhythm we had going has blown away like sand under us. I lie down in bed at night and I wonder: what is my purpose? 

The Window

I look out my window now and the sky has darkened. Branches dance against pale blue. Two lights shine like stars from a church parking lot. They ground me, like the sunset did. They are fixed. This house has foundation. I am in it. I have foundation too.

Yes, simply being has purpose. Breathing, moving, and living each possess infinite value because life matters. I've been walking a lot with my husband and I see more people than ever walking and jogging in spring's showcase of green and color pops. We are slowing, being, and dare I say it, enjoying nature like we may not have since we were kids. God does not ask his flowers or grass to do anything but be their glorious selves. Whatever we are to be in a moment, that is what we are to do.

Shifts

In the middle of this world shift, our family moved. We moved from a normal suburban home with a small yard to an old farmhouse with a couple of acres, a red barn, a big garden, and a solar powered chicken coop. The market was good. We thought our home would sell fast. Maybe a little rash, but we bought a new home before we sold our old home. 

Then COVID-19. 

Then shelter in place announced on my birthday (not the shabang I had hoped for.) We were reeling. Scared that we had just made the worst decision of our lives. My husband's visage was almost gray. All we could do was pray hard and trust God he would take care of us.

A Stone to Remember

Where do you want God to take care of you? Again, pause and consider. You've got time.

Where has He done this today?

Oh, we are so loved. We are held in God's space and time, which is eternal and beyond us. However this world fluctuates, as it continues to do, still, God is with us. Strangely, this time is a gift. A reminder of God's lovingkindness.    

Honestly, I had such mixed feelings about moving. I said no to an amazing grad program overseas so our family could do this. Those days before COVID and my birthday I was already grieving the death of a dream (or a version of it). I was fighting the mental dips hard and talking myself into contentment and gratitude. 

The following Tuesday our home went on the market. It sold within 24 hours. 

This window I look out of is in my new office. It's my husband's temporary office, but eventually, it will be mine.  Half the room is unpacked boxes, the other half a bed on its side and a desk and a chair. But I am here writing to you and thanking God for providing for today. I remember how he has brought me through a season and continues to do so, in a huge miracle but mostly tiny ones. I wonder how He is carrying you...Today, yesterday, the day before.

It's good to remember.

It's good to stop and say, yes, this sunset is gift. This night is gift. 

In this time of gift, of lovingkindness, we are creating a history of grace. We make it is we pray. We forge it as we make our days. We become the history, the erectors of ebenezers (stones of thankful memory), to be seen and read for the people in our lives.

So find that spot in your home or your yard where you can look out (and inward) and see God's goodness. It's often right here in the now. Sometimes its in the remembering. And always, always, it's in asking God to help us see Him as we are, where we are.

One final thing

What do you need right now to have creative courage? I've seen a lot of beautiful, powerful encouraging things happening on the interwebs and it makes me so glad. But what is missing for you? I'd love to know what would be the most help to you right now. This helps to focus all the ideas swimming in my brain.

Scroll down and click Email. I promise to read every one.

As always, thank you. You are a gift to me and to this world.

Christina