Trading Yellow for Gold
It's not often I wake up with Elton John singing away in my head. Not that I don't like Elton, because I heart much of his old stuff from my youth, but I don't recall it ever being his tunes whose melodies lure me into consciousness. (This is where some of you younger readers will say, "But wait, remember that one time that you wrote about his such-and-such song?" and I'll quip back, "But wait, remember that one time when I turned 50?") I threw back the covers this morning with Elton bidding farewell to the yellow brick road. So goodbye yellow brick road, where the dogs of society howl. You can't lock me in your penthouse, I'm going back to my plow. Back to the howling old owl in...
A New Day
When I opened my eyes this morning, I blinked them closed and then open again, trying to make sense of what I was seeing. It looked different in our room. The morning light that pours through the big windows seemed a different quality. I rolled over and was stunned by what I saw. There is no filter on that photo. Not just the sky, but the trees, the grass...my world, in that moment, was ROSY. After a hard time, yesterday, a relinquishing of angry feelings I didn't even realize I had, this view floods me with fresh perspective. We walk through difficult days that we don't always understand, but there is always a new morning that follows. Always the fresh promise of a new day, and the...
Rubberband (Wo)Man
You know those bouncy balls made out of rubberbands? That's what I feel like today. Jumbled. Wound up tight. What I thought was going to be a day of finally gaining some clarity in our waiting game, has turned into something different altogether. Different, least anticipated options have left me spinning and trying to find traction, and I'm not sure they're the ones I want. But that's the thing. These different options hold a clarity all their own. Out of the several others at the start of all this, these are the ones left standing. Through all our prayer about it, these are the ones whose doors God has seen fit to let stay open, and while I should be rejoicing over that fact, I'm...
The Chairs
We've started doing something new around here. We have two occasional chairs that are tucked into a recessed bookcase in our living room. They are the kind of chairs that typically only get used when we have a roomful of people, but we both love them. There is something very calming about sitting there, where you can see the fireplace, and the rest of the room as you look out the windows beyond. It's the only place in the room where you have that particular vantage point. One evening, not too long ago, I found Kevin sitting there with his iPad. He told me that he'd just decided those chairs needed to be used more often. I was in the middle of making dinner at the time, so the next...
Sweet Spot
You know what I've noticed lately? Kevin and I are in a sweet spot. In the ebbs and flows of marriage, we happen to be flowing right now, and I love it. Things aren't always wine and roses in our relationship. Just like any other, we go through periods when we don't communicate as well, or things feel a little distant. We're fortunate that those times are few and far between, and for that I'm grateful. But one thing that's occurred to me is that the distant times aren't always wrapped around something hard going on in our lives. It's actually the challenges that seem to pull us together. Yesterday, as we were working on answering questions for our non-profit exemption, we got...