Darker Days

These have been the darker days of Covid 19. The whole world breathes heavy and labored for air now in various ways. The lofty world goals have been forced to fall and simple ones remain: to breathe, to eat, to find hope, light and health again. maybe even laugh again. Many are sick and hospitalized, some suffer financially, some from aching loneliness, some from the imprisonment within 4 walls of hard circumstances at home, some suffer from holding too tight to lesser light that can never give fully or free fully... like He can....the lists goes on. I suffer from many of these.

Nevertheless, there is a beauty to this darkness. It is revealing the need for Light. I've only found one source of  Light...and i am forever changed and greatFULL to have found it. Jesus..His Word..His Light that dispels the darknesses of the world...the One my heart longs for..the One that says "even darkness isn't dark to Him" Psalm 139:12. The One that warms, the One that says when i am WITH Him...darkness will have to flee....Stay by us oh Lord. Cause our hearts to stay near.

Each day i wake to a world with both: Dark and Light. I tend to focus on one or the other. It gets harder to focus on the light....when the darkness is pressing in...a darkness i can almost feel lately like a heavy fog blanket being laid upon me. If it covers me fully...even then, the Word says...darkness is not dark to HIM. As for hope...sometimes the light is just a sliver in the corner. But it's enough to illuminate. It's enough to set my eyes in focus. It is enough. "The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it"  John 1:5

Darker Days photo shoot with my family...inspired by the light.

Shedding the Sweater

I don't really want to shed it. This sweater of raising young children. I say it's like a sweater because it's warm and enveloping..comforting and constant- itchy and foreign and red-faced frustrating at times, but so near and surrounding. I've been needed, life or death needed! I've had a steady job that i will always love...and grown stronger. They've tugged at my sleeve and made me laugh, cuz the Lord knows, there's no time to cry. It's been hands on and wonderfully worrisome. My heart cares cavern -deep for these creatures. I've been less lonely, dancing in this spacious place with the delights of my heart. They've become my home, but i won't always be theirs, and this is hard. and this is good.

These boys keep growing. My mama- job keeps changing. 

 I'm in mourning, I'm feeling excitement...i'm naked and unsure what to put on after sweater season. The boys venture greater lengths away from my side. I am taking deeper breaths, releasing their fingertips reluctantly so they can become the little men they are supposed to be. 

Fumbling towards my own heart again...i can hear it's familiar rhythm rising louder. Beating old desires and rhythms that have hibernated. Winter has passed and i'm waking again. I've changed. Our marriage has changed... Who are we now?  It's as if i took on the heartbeat of this home over the years, it being the loudest, and began to march along with it..and help set it's pulse. As the house grew louder and the kids tugged at my sleeve more frequently. My own beat grew quieter and quieter. I was lulled to sleep in some ways..(  at times not without fight and tears and wrestle.) Alas, I became less and it became more. As it should. and it is good. This painful loosing of myself..this falling deeper in love -easy as a breeze, until here i am: forever in love and forced to wear something new.

After the boys of summer have gone....

I love the song "boys of summer" by Don Henley....so good..Painting pictures of summer nostalgia and sun kissed romance fading...with the running percussion heart beat and seagull electric guitar licks..i sing it at the top of my lungs.  When school starts i feel this in my bones..the summer nostalgia. New things are ahead, but there is mourning for what was. Here i remember our 2017 summer. Thank you God for every sun-kissed bit of it. We soaked it all in.....and carry it with us.



                                                                  Amos's Allstar game

Bennett's team (the underdogs) get 2nd place

The New ( used) Jeep comes into the family

Saying goodbye to the Chickadees class with Linda

Izzy catches a lightning bug

                                                                    Predators Fever

                                                                   Father's Day....

Visiting Dondon and TB and cousins

 Monster Trucks with the The Fowlers

Garden harvest

The Gauses on the boat

The Burdens on the boat

The Peters

Bennett wrote us a letter

Staying with Dondon and TB

Kevin and I lead worship at Coaches Honor marriage Retreat

Amy's Lake House 

Flour war with Grandpa