where i live and how i love it.

i love the prairie. i love 180 degrees of sky. i love the fall bareness of field and pale depth of tone. i love how vibrant the setting sun makes everything. i love the richness of textures, the silhouettes of trees, the flocks of blackbirds, the patches of yellow and red along the roadsides. i love the grey and imminent snow clouds. i love staring out the window and straining to see the flakes as they begin to fly about. i love the first snowfall. i love its quiet stillness. i love that you can hear it snowing. i love walking fast and seeing my breath and feeling the tingle in my legs and hands as i rush to warm them up. i love rosy cheeks and fogged up glasses upon entering the house. as much as i love the brightness and blueness of summer, i love the greyness of november. i love how the wind swirls. i love the smell of leaves and woodsmoke. i love digging blankets out of my closet, woolen socks out of my drawer, and mittens out my basket. i love traipsing around in boots. i love smelling each scarf as i wrap it snugly around my neck for the first time. i love popping my collar and stuffing my hands in my pockets and leaning into the wind. i love candy pumpkins and hot apple cider and homemade popcorn, no matter the tremendous mess made in the effort, and the burnt old maids at the bottom of the pan. i love wind-tossed lion hair. i love flannel. i love the warmth of hugging my nephews, and rubbing red hands until they are warm. i love stocking hats that fall over eyes. i don't exactly love it, but staticky hat hair is strangely nostalgic. i love the stillness of a frosty morning. i love the twilight when the very first stars transform the velvety backdrop from navy to pitch. i love noticing evergreens as if for the first time. i love happy farmers. i love pumpkin and cranberry everything. i love squash. i love naps burrowed under a down comforter on drowsy days, and deciding several times that a few more minutes are quite acceptable. i love thankful trees, and want to hang one up at work. i love thanksgiving. i love how belonging it makes one feel. i love hand turkeys and gourds and especially vast fields be-specked with sweet smelling haybales. and i love crispy tangy juicy honeycrisp apples. i think i really love this part of fall because it means the near-end of a season. winter is at hand. the autumn busyness has almost receded. the time of stillness and whiteness and family and rest is not out of reach.

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this is my first fall home in three years. i decided one year ago tomorrow that i'd be finishing my responsibilities at the bible college in germany and coming home. for the ensuing month, i was a bit of an emotional train-wreck, but i've not once regretted or despised my departure. it was time. seasons of life are as faithful and natural as the orbit of this earth around the sun. they can't be fought or delayed or resisted. they just happen. and they're good. i'm looking forward to another change of season after this next quarter of a year. in some ways i'm ready and eager and hopeful. in other ways i'm seeing the things-now-stable as the transients that they are. i am, to be very candid, with part of me wishing that my life didn't change so drastically every year. and yet, i am trusting and leaning on Everlasting Arms, and walking in paths prepared before the beginning of time. i'm savoring the slow songs, in a manner of speaking. my life is but a vapor, and yet each day is vivid and alive and joyful and wonderful. and change is not to be dreaded. i feel as if it takes me a fairly long time to really get settled somewhere, and feel so here and now. but i choose not to take what i know, what i see, what i feel. i have often begged the Lord to show me "what to do with these hands You've given me" and a task lies ahead. much is unknown; yet you and i, dear friend, are called not to know the future nor even fully comprehend the present, but are rather given the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, the eyes of our understanding being enlightened. we know the hope of His calling, the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe. this i know, because God is for me. but know that the Lord has set apart for Himself him who is godly; the Lord will hear when I call to Him. Abraham did not waver at the promise of God through unbelief, but was strengthened in faith, giving glory to God, and being fully convinced that what He had promised He was also able to perform. we know Him. and He knows us. and He directs our path. He doesn't do it to get the better of us; what He does is done in faithfulness and out of pure, everlasting, merciful love. God is for us. i believe that. and i love Him because He first loved me. it's not really about the place or the stuff or the people or the work at all. it's about Him loving me, and me learning to receive it and reciprocate it back to Him and to others. it's about the heart. it's a lifelong lesson. but it's pretty all-encompassing. little things seem littler. trust and obey. you'll be happy in Jesus.

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bright days lie nevertheless ahead. looking forward to fellowship and worship and refreshing next week in california. i really love my job right now, and i'm enjoying slowly getting to know the people in my church. it's a sweet church. i love my family and spend most waking moments in company of at least one brother or parent or nephew. music and laughter are constant in this house, and silence is a valuable, yet not unknown, commodity. i am a very blessed girl. i'm learning a lot. old lessons and new lessons. it's good. it's good to be content. and it's good to be growing.

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We are continually retreating behind our limitations and saying, "Thus far and no farther can I go." 

God is ever laying His hand upon us and thrusting us out into the open, saying, 

"You can be more than you are; you must be more than you are."

-springs in the valley, october 28