Fresh With No Mistakes In It (...Yet)

2010 seems to be picking up speed as it sweeps toward it's close, with 2011 looming up ahead. Time is a relentless thing.
This time of year is always bittersweet to me. There is the anticipation of a fresh start with the new year mingled with regrets  either for good times slipping away with the old year, or for opportunities missed and dreams unaccomplished.
The special thing about the arrival of a new year is that it is all "fresh with no mistakes in it yet". It's a bit like being handed a clean slate. And while I don't believe that New Year's is the only time to make resolutions, to me it is an especially ideal time for just that. What better or bigger opportunity?
My heart has been very full these days, and sorting through that fullness I've found material for a number of new resolutions. They are honest, eager, perhaps daunting, resolutions to hang onto throughout the next twelve months. This time more than ever, I will be embracing the gift  and the burden of a new year with trepidation.

Back In The Saddle Again

That is the the name of one of my favorite songs... because it sounds so delightfully cowboy-ish, and because of the good family memories attached to it. However, this is not about a song, cowboys, or memories. This is about going back to school. :)

I'm excited because ... this morning I registered for classes!

Watching others go back to school this Fall and listening to them talk about their classes has made time drag. I've missed school! (I'm sure that in the growing up years my mom never thought she'd hear me say that!) I miss biology with Ms. E and my old classmates, especially. I even miss memorizing all those stacks of vocabulary words, and hi-lighting my textbook and notes in different colors according to category....

But never mind all that now, because this girl is back in the saddle again! And so happy! Just wanted to share that with you folks before I close this up and head over to campus to tie up some loose ends. Have a lovely day!

Encompassed about

Have you ever been so frightened you felt violently nauseated? I didn't know that was possible until a few hours ago. I felt that way, and I was shaking like a leaf.
Now, about three hours later I am so tired my eyelids are closing on my as I type. I'm still scared. A little scared to go to bed. Scared of the dark. Scared of the empty bedrooms I have to walk past. And scared of the nightmares that might come. But my body has had enough for one day and is going into sleep mode.
I have never known fear that compared to this before.
There are some things you just never really think are going to happen to you or your loved ones. So when they do happen you are utterly unprepared. It feels like you've been hit by a bolt of lightning. The closeness of danger to a loved one is terrifying and renders you feeling helpless and useless.
All you can do is hold on to them tightly, saying that everything will be okay. You don't really know that; or at least you don't know how everything is going to be okay even if you believe somehow it will. But you say it because you don't know what else to say. And because you want it to be true.
Ah, the smallness of humanity. The vulnerability of the human race.
But above all this, most wondrous, ah, the great mercy of God and His sovereignty and protection over His own! How thankful I am for that tonight, as I've known His protection and mercy as never before. As the psalmist so beautifully said it:

"You hem me in—behind and before;

you have laid your hand upon me.

Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,

too lofty for me to attain.

Where can I go from your Spirit?

Where can I flee from your presence?

If I go up to the heavens, you are there;

if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.

If I rise on the wings of the dawn,

if I settle on the far side of the sea,

even there your hand will guide me,

your right hand will hold me fast.

If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me

and the light become night around me,”

even the darkness will not be dark to you;

the night will shine like the day,

for darkness is as light to you." (Psalm 139:5-12)

Secrets of public spaces

Have you ever just sat in a coffee shop or a park and observed the humanity that surges around you? I have. And when I have, I've noticed that there is a whole new and different world around me from the one I regularly see. Problem is, regularly, I'm not seeing. I go about my business trying to keep out of the way and go unnoticed, and in so doing, I miss out on a whole lot.
You know that 100th clone of the businessman in a suit? Well, while I waited for the bus one day, I saw him. He was striding importantly beside the park. A blossoming vine enveloped the fence around the park. Impulsively, Businessman-Clone halted and sniffed a flower, but in the same instant caught himself and hurried along again, looking nervously around him in case he'd been spotted taking time to sniff a flower (which by the way, is a very un-manly thing to do... according to my brother).
The millionth person to walk into the coffee shop jingling the bell over the door could stay just that. But you could look - and see the hippie girl that caused the bell over the door to jingle. She orders a pumpkin cappuccino, which sounds as odd as she looks. Then she settles into an armchair with her coffee and a very delicious looking book. That millionth person to walk in the coffee shop just took on a whole new dimension.
Suddenly she's not just another coffee drinker. She's a real person. With a quirky taste. And she loves books. Suddenly he isn't a clone in a suit anymore. He's a real person. With a heart. With love of life. With interest. And suddenly, the drab, bustling city has color and friendliness to it. There's the spice of endless possibilities in the air. It occurs to me that maybe I don't need my book or my laptop next time I'm out. A notepad and pencil could be very handy instead.

Moonshine

I went out after supper tonight to try out the night settings on my camera. Once I saw the moon, I wasn't really interested in photographing anything else.
But the moon is shy tonight. It's hiding behind the trees. The pale, creamy moonshine is spilled across the velvety sky and the dappled through the trees and on the grass, but the moon itself has slipped behind the trees, wanting to avoid the paparazzi like me, no doubt.
I stepped around the garden, keeping an eye on the moon. As I reached the other side the trees disappeared from before the moon, but the moon was swathed in clouds and would not be persuaded to come out.

The mosquitoes, much less shy, were also enjoying the moonshine. Despite the thick coating of mosquito repellent I applied to my skin before I went out, they flocked to me; humming shrilly and feasting on my arms and neck. Eventually, they convinced me to come back indoors ...where there is no moon. I suppose it's just as well when the moon won't come out and play with me, but the mosquitoes will.

Soon I will go to bed, and I will open the blinds enough to let the moon shine down on me as I fall asleep. Maybe it will even decide it's safe to come out from behind the trees and the clouds and I will be able to glimpse it's fullness before drifting into dreamland.

Battlefield

Listening to sad songs tonight.
On regular days the same songs sound pretty and sweet. But by some mysterious means, their identities have changed and tonight their disconsolate notes are just the spillover of my heart. Every line of music reflects the desolation inside.
Layers of the bittersweet, the precious, the painful, the adorable, the complicated, the dreams and the impossible, the stark and the unfair of life all interlaced. At times I soar - high on the glory of the bright moments of life. Other times strength gives out and I sink beneath the painful and irreparably unfair moments of life.
I wait for my head to bob up from the waves. I gasp for air.

But I musn't wait for my head to bob up out of the waves. I must make myself get out of the waves. Somehow.

And then I hear the Words -chiding yet comforting:

"For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? 
Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Romans 8:18, 35, 37-39)

And the promise:

"There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God
is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye
are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that
ye may be able to bear it." (1 Cor. 10:13)

 There's so very, very much I don't understand. The pain is real, the tears are real. I don't know how it will all be fixed, or even if it will all be fixed. I don't know what the next day brings.But I reach for my Savior's hand and firmly holding to it I step across the threshold of the unknown, into the darkness and fog of tomorrow - confident only in His promises. He is faithful.

A Kind of Spring Fever

Sitting on the old cart in Grandmother's back yard on this warm April afternoon the 83 degrees make if feel more like a June afternoon. Barney, the orange cat, is curled up beside me. Every now and then he raises his head and looks sadly into my eyes, meowing. He is very needy today. He has cut his paw and is feeling a bit depressed on account of it. At the moment he's snoozing peacefully, but the tip of his tail is twitching - ever on guard. There is a yellow smudge of pollen on Barney's chin which spoils his normally dignified look.
A gust of wind buffets us and it smells like plowed earth, grasses, clover, and whatever other mysterious ingredients might be responsible for the delicious smell of Spring. New life triumphing from the death-grip of winter. It's a wild, sweet, fragrant, alluring wind. It takes me back, in spirit, to those enchanted places in the hills and mountains of Aragón of my growing-up years.
My brothers and sisters and I used to go wading in the creek at Belsué, where our parents took us on innumerable picnics. Meandering slowly upstream we would stop to admire the tadpoles and the minnows and to try to catch them. Tadpoles we caught, but minnows we did not; although we made desperate efforts to do so, with shouting and effusive splashing in the process. We zig-zagged our way across what we called "stepping stones", which sometimes meant leaping dangerously from a boulder onto a very wobbly rock, and gloried in seeing one another miss and end up on the seat of their pants in middle of the creek, completely soaked.
At another of our picnic spots by the Río Gállego, my sister and I shared a Secret Meadow. We would sneak off when the boys weren't looking and slip through the bushes and tall grasses into a sweeping meadow of myriads of wildflowers. At the edge, we could sit under one of the old oak trees and listen to the wind rush through it's branches while we looked out across that sea of color, taking in the rich fragrance and the glory of it. The hills in the distance seemed to fence the meadow. On those hills, though you could not see them from that distance, you could hear the music of the sheep's bells. It was our slice of fairyland.
Barney brings me out of my reveries as he pulls himself up and stands on my lap, staring into my face. He meows adamantly as if to remind me that I am here for the sole purpose of comforting him, and to emphasize his point, he lies down across my keyboard. I have to peel him off and convince him that beside me is a perfectly good place to be.
Something deep inside me is stirred... restless... it's a kind of Spring fever, tinted with nostaglia and homesickness.