First Up

I haven't been writing lately and it feels like my head and my heart are stuffed.

So today...I want to start because the stories, thoughts and ideas should flow and not stagnate.   No more waiting for something deep to strike, unravel, or expound upon.

Instead of trying to reflect on the previous year, I'm looking forward to this one...and offering up simple glimpses of the simple things.  I'm trying to celebrate each new day by doing something that's decidedly not work.   Something creative.  Something relaxing.  Something outside. 
Celebrate and simplify.  Feed your soul.   Take some pictures.   

A couple of thoughts:

• We've had some snow, but not nearly enough.  My body needs sunshine, but it prefers to sit on the couch.  Shovelling gets me out.  On one walk we found a spot where 3 deer were bedded down when the snow fell.    And then a few days later....a deer carcass.  Someone must have field dressed it this fall.
• But I baked the first batch of blue berry muffins for 2012.  A friend of Craig's noticed a serious shortage of muffins in the house.  Really!   
• We've had mild weather.  7 degrees on January 7th!  The parsley in the garden is quite happy.   Apparently.   
• And who knew that January would hold so many spectacular sunsets.  Today I drove to work and saw the sun rise through the clouds. If not for the seasons, I would never see a sunrise.  God knows me so well!
• And Blix?!.....she and I have been out in the field almost every day.   It's sandy and dry as a bone.  Yesterday we saw a flock of white snow geese (maybe even tundra swans...too far away to tell for sure.) Then we sped to the lagoons to see if that's where they headed....instead I took a photo of the little lane between the ponds.
• We love the other side of the tracks.   We live on the wrong side :)
• Today I'm looking forward to our family reunion this summer.  We've been trying to settle on a venue and have finally narrowed it down to.......PEI!  I loved that one of my nieces, who lives abroad, is looking forward to gathering on the Island.  She gets homesick for the PLACE, just as one gets homesick for the people.   I thought I was the only one.  It happens.  

So today these thoughts are dancing a little jig in my mind. 

Desiderata

Not Just a Wall Flower....

There’s a Switchfoot song that says “We were meant to live for so much more, have we lost ourselves?…” and then another one that says “It was a beautiful letdown.  The day I knew…that I don’t belong here.”

Same.  Different.  Connected. Contradictory?  At first glance maybe.  

I’ve just come through a busy time.   Sometimes the busyness throws you off centre….   Realizing that you’ve lost your balance is an unsettling moment.  You realize that some of your priorities are out of whack and what shakes you is that you’ve allowed the moments and deadlines to drive you to distraction.   You’ve followed plans and steps but haven’t always asked for a blessing on it.   It just needed to be done and since it’s in line with your general calling, God must be okay with it all.   There’s that screech again.

Slow down.  Take a deep breath.  Turn it all off for a day. Pray. Read. Focus. And start again.  

I am meant to live for so much more.   And yes, I do lose myself sometimes.  The “me” I’m supposed to be, was created to be, and not the one life sometimes demands me to be.  I focus so hard on getting the notes right that I forget to make music.   Right now the one that I was created to be wants to decorate for Christmas.  The one life demands me to be needs to finish writing a newsletter.   It’s already half written.   And I love to write so I look forward to finishing it and adding some ideas that fell into my thoughts when I turned it all off for a day.  Doing all the things that life demands I do is like the technical writing of the music and I love to make sure it is done well…. and the creative things: the writing, the cards, the decorating…that adds the color and the artistry….it too is part of the musicianship of writing a score.  My life needs to have balance to reflect the beauty of the One who made me.   I am more than a skill-set.

But sometimes life throws things that I find hard to process.   Sometimes I get disappointed with human nature.  Things happen.  People behave badly.  I struggle to wrap my mind around those things.  Why can’t I stay unaffected by “stuff”?  Why do I feel that pain?  On those days it comforts me that I wasn’t created just for this world…what a beautiful let down.  I don’t belong here.  These disappointments shouldn’t feel normal to me.  They pain my heart.  They pain my Maker’s heart.   In the beginning, He created mankind to know only goodness and kindness.

And so these musings are little escapes from the daily grind.  From the things I have to do and get done: a step back to focus on how the details make up the whole picture.   It makes me realize that the way I do those things should look different.  If I’m blooming where I’m planted I shouldn’t just be a wall flower but a living stone  People should be able to see my Maker in me and that somehow I do belong here, because that is His purpose for me right now.  But…in the grand scheme of things, this is all temporary.    I’m in the “here and now” but someday I will look back.  I will have to give account.   I should invest and serve in such a way that  I won’t regret how I spent my time.  So today I have to be thoughtful and want to reflect prayerfully on how I move forward.  I know I can only spend my time once.   Experience teaches that lesson, sometimes delightfully but often painfully.    

I have some realignment to do; there are important temporal things that have to get done.    But the way I do those things in the context of hindsight, will make all the difference.    


Others may not understand the rationale.   

Sometimes priorities just defy worldly logic.