by jphilo | Jan 1, 2009 | Walking Down the Gravel Road
People who see the sunrise on New Year’s morning belong to one of two camps: those who left their parties at dawn, and those who went to bed early. As a member of the second camp, I was up this morning, waiting for enough daylight for my walk.
The thick clouds and persistent darkness weakened my resolve. For a few minutes I struggled with an internal debate. Should I go now in the depressing gloom before company arrives or wait until later, hoping for sunshine and enough discipline to walk instead of visit? I sighed and put on my shoes.
The light was weak and the gloom was heavy on my shoulders as I trudged along the lane. But when I reached the gravel road and turned east, a soft glow greeted me. By the time I reached our neighbor’s property, a riot of pink, purple and orange glowed behind the bare, black branches of the winter woods and tinged the dirty snow with color.
The dawn of 2009 looks gloomy from my vantage point. We’re in a recession. The stock market keeps tanking. Royalties from my book are two years away, and who buys books during a recession anyway? Our son, who has nothing and needs health insurance, needs a job. Where will he find one in this economy? And where will Anne’s college tuition money come from next year?
Worries weigh me down. But hope stirs within me as I remember the unexpected blessings of 2008: my first book contract, our son’s treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder and his re-entry into our lives, to mention a few. Surely, the God who brought the blessings of the past will provide new ones in the year to come.
This morning I experienced the first blessing of 2009. In the dim light of a gloomy morning, through branches black and bare, I saw Him paint the sky.
by jphilo | Dec 6, 2007 | Daily Life
The weather turned cold here right around Thanksgiving, and it’s stayed cold ever since. Nobody was quite ready for it, except the local ski hill owners, but I thought I was adjusting pretty well. Every morning I dressed warmly and took my morning walk, until last Saturday when a mixture of sleet, rain and snow coated Iowa roads with two inches of ice. No more walks down my gravel road until there’s a thaw and the forecast doesn’t hold hope for one.
So I find creative ways to exercise indoors and try not to whine about the cold, but last night I started complaining. I was snuggled in bed, able to concentrate on my reading once my body heat had warmed the sheets. Then I noticed my hands were dry, itchy dry. I needed hand lotion, but that would mean getting out of the warm bed and shivering in the cool air again. Finally, I made a run for the lotion and then dived into bed again.
As the sheets warmed and my hands softened, my heart did too. I thought about all the women before me who never have hand lotion and how painful their cracked, chapped skin must have been. And if they had anything to rub into their skin, I wondered how bad the lard or goose grease smelled, and how cold the run from bed to lotion and back was for them. My attitude changed as I rubbed my hands and thought about those pioneer women. Instead of complaining, I was grateful for a warm house, for new sheets and a comfortable bed, for smooth skin and for legs that function.
So I’m coining a new phrase – hand lotion grace. Whenever I get whiny this winter, a sure symptom that my attitude is growing calloused, I’ll head for my hand lotion and let it’s luxurious grace soften my dry hands and my hard heart.
While I’m thinking of it, I’d better add hand lotion to my shopping list. I’ll need a lot of it this winter.
