The Unexpected Slow

I'm sitting here eating breakfast this morning, enjoying the view of all of the beautiful snow on the pine trees across the road. I can hear my little boy, my early riser, in the room next to me already enjoying the day at home.

Tim asked me late last night what I had planned for today and I looked at him with a big blank expression and said, "Nothing."

Oh how different that would have been if not for this gorgeous snow. When the weather man brought in this winter system late Tuesday night, he might not have known it but he also handed me a clean slate for the next day or two, void of responsibilities outside the home. And with that, a bonus of unexpected little blessings from a few people that I'm very fond of.

Like this beautiful hilarious little picture Quinley drew and handed to me with the declaration that I am to, "Never throw anything away EVER that I draw again!" 

And  sledding down a hill with the kids and their friends and hearing the sound of their giggles over and over and over.

And baking cookies AND brownies and drinking hot cocoa in the middle of the day because why not overload on chocolate on a day off?!

And playing Uno and Old Maid and sharing pots of chili and meatballs with dear friends who live close by and could get to our house safely.

I realize that we couldn't do this every day and expect to function well in the real world. But I've also realized over the last thirty six hours that without pausing to live like this every once in a while, it's easy to lose perspective about the little things in life that matter most.

With every snowflake that falls, also falls the blessing of the reality of today and really living. 

I hear there's more snow in the forecast and instead of stressing about how many assessments I can get finished or how many loads of laundry I can get done today-I'm going to enjoy my family and the slowness that this time brings.

A few friends of mine were discussing back and forth on a group text late last night about plans for our bible study today and what that would look like if school was cancelled. One of them said, "I love the pause this time brings."

Well said dear friend. I couldn't agree more. 

Now I'm off to put on my snow boots and bundle up again for the next stint in the beloved snow.

Read More

Point The Way

Angel Varney

Point The Way

The weekend had been a nice and long one with three days full of good times and laughter and void of a schedule. 

It was a holiday, the first one of the school year to be exact. Time was spent backyard barbecuing, dipping in the pool and watching fireworks at night. For a while mom even got to sit at the waters edge and chat with friends while the littles swam, splashed and dove to their hearts content. 

So when Tuesday morning came and those littles of mine had been dropped off at school I pulled into a parking spot, cracked the windows open and turned the ignition off to breathe and reminisce for a bit. 

(Please tell me that I'm not the only one who finds her vehicle a good place to pray, read, answer emails and just find five minutes of refuge some days.)

My five minutes turned to fifteen before I realized it and I quickly got out and hurried to rush inside. 

But before I even reached the front door I saw her struggling there and knew that I wouldn't be making it to the morning exercise class that I had intended to go to. The Lord had other plans. 

She was wearing a look I'd now recognize anywhere. The look resembles a deer in the headlights kind of fear mixed with a bit of blankness that comes from depression. 

She looked so very tired.

She was me.

Five years prior I had walked that lonely road called depression and by the grace of God I'd vowed after coming out of it to reach out to whomever I met struggling with the same foe.

She has big dark eyes and as I looked into them and saw my reflection it was suddenly me standing at the kitchen sink, or the checkout line, or by my car at any given place on any given day. The heaviness can sweep over you in an instant anywhere or anytime and make you feel as if a cloud the size of Texas has settled over your life.

I shook my own shoulders knowing all too well that my light needed to invade this darkness settling over my friend.

"Here, let me help you," I offered. I reached for something she was trying to carry and she burst into tears and fell into my arms.

That's how you know that you are one step closer to real help and freedom from this beast. When you can feel the brokenness and let the river of tears flow freely then your heart is good and ready for a revival of sorts instead of hardened and calloused to the pain.

I stood there and listened. I let her cry. I said not a word as she told me how angry she was at the disappointment her life had become. I rubbed the back of her head like she was my five year old child and listened some more.

If there's one thing I've learned through the years about an  encounter of this type,  it's that people often avoid helping or reaching out because they are afraid they won't know what to say.

The beautiful truth of it all is that transformation takes place not so much in what you say-but how well you listen to others that God puts in your path.

When she was finished talking we prayed together and I shared with her a bit of my story, because although I might not be able to fix what is wrong in her life, I can point the way to the One who fixed mine.

John has always been my favorite of the Gospels and I particularly love how in the opening verses of the fist chapter John the Baptist is described as a witness of the Light.

Not to be confused with THE LIGHT, he was just a good teacher of the way to the One who could set men free from darkness.

We were never meant to walk this path of Christianity alone. When we open ourselves up to testify and share with someone who is experiencing a pain that we too have experienced before?

It’s like turning a big chandelier on inside of an old musty cave. Light expels darkness every single time.

Read More

Listening

Back where I come from the town is small and the ties run deep.

Friendships are made on playgrounds in Kindergarten and often carry through to adulthood. Such is the case with me anyway.

I'm sitting here watching my boy play the day away with his buddies and I can't help but wonder what bonds are being made over bike rides and dips in the pool.

Some of the little girls that I played hop scotch with at recess in elementary school are the same ones that were bridesmaids at my wedding. We grew up, got married and carried our children through pregnancy and infancy together. We also had to learn, as anyone else who is among the living, how to get each other through some hard times.

And more often than not that meant not knowing what in the world to say, so we got really good at listening over time.

Such was the case when recently a lifelong friend and I were talking our way through the feeling of  a lack of productivity that is often accompanied with the young years of motherhood.

I say feeling of with emphasis because that's exactly what it is. A feeling.  While we rely heavily on them, our feelings can sometimes be a far off illusion of the truth. While I desperately wanted to be able to bust out in a monologue that would bring any woman out of the throes of depression-the truth is that I just wasn't sure I had them.

So I sat and I listened.

I waited and nodded my head in humble understanding because the truth of the matter is that I've spent some time there myself. In that mode of wondering if the days that sometimes seem so long and unstructured are producing anything good.

It's a good breeding ground for discouragement in that space of time where loneliness meets monotony. One load of dishes after another, one load of laundry after another and it can all start to feel a bit less than the glorious making of something wonderful than it is.

I know this to be true because I've lived it.

And let me tell you the last thing I wanted to hear on any given day of a worthless feeling was someone to tell me how to get out of it.

No-what I needed was a good ear to hear me out. Because I think that the Lord puts deep inside of us a longing to reckon with Him about the way we spend our days and the way we feel our worth.

If I spend too much time talking and pitching in an opinion where I'm not even sure it's warranted? Then I risk talking over Him.

I've learned a beautiful thing while talking to my sister over the years. Sometimes we'll call each other, one of us with a big problem pressing to the front of our mind. Most of the time what I've recognized is that neither of us necessarily needs a great amount of advice from the other.

Usually just laying it all out there in the open air is enough. Before you know it, just stating the problem begins to start the working of a solution without even so much as another opinion.

Sometimes truth shines through like a radiant light when someone takes the time to close their mouth and turn their ear to listen.

Read More

April

You know that old saying, "Life can change in the blink of an eye?" Yeah, that's turned out to be true. It's a little like balancing a tight rope for me because I've always been sort of carefree and laid back but with every year older that I'm getting comes another realization.

Be ye therefore careful.

And sometimes even in the midst of being as careful as can be, accidents are going to happen.

Thus was the case on Monday. What would have been known as an otherwise random normal evening grilling burgers turned into a nightmare right in front of my eyes.

Exactly what happened when and all of the details aren't anything I care to rehash at this point-I don't even think I could accurately recall myself. In short, April and I were just trying to light the grill and make some hamburgers and it blew up on her.

Sometimes a flurry of activity in an emergency situation is a bit like watching a lifetime flash right before your eyes.

Suddenly I was seven years old again, walking that sweet little thing into a Kindergarten classroom on her first day.

I still remember walking her off the bus and up the stairs into the school and the proud way I held her little hand in mine.

Two years her senior, it was my job to safely deliver my little sister to her classroom and to calm those big eyes full of uncertainty and fear. I'm sure I left her with comforting words but I do remember her Kindergarten classroom was at one end of the hall on the first floor of the building and my classroom was upstairs and all the way on the other end of the hall. It seemed forever away to me.

What was I going to do if she needed me? I wished that I could bring my class downstairs to be close to her.

All these years have passed and I don't know that I've ever thought much about that first day of school for her and the way I hated to leave her until now. Now we're in our thirties and just this week I stood and watched a helicopter take her away to the hospital and that was as much as I could do.

Helpless would be one way to describe how I felt.

Help-less but HOPE-FULL because time and again in my life as a mother, sister, friend I have went as far as I could for somebody and had to leave the rest up to the Lord. I'm human and humbled by the fact of just how little I can do and how incapable I am and how big and how capable He is.

What I have found is that it's times like these that we can experience the richness of our Lord so near. I believe that He's there all the time for us-He doesn't come and go. He's constant. It's just that we're more aware of Him when He is all we have.

I'm so grateful for God's healing power. April's airway could have easily been compromised. Holes were burned through her clothing but her body didn't get burned nearly like her neck, face and hands.

Just like years ago when I turned and went away into my own classroom, I am standing on the sidelines now watching her heal.

And I know that our God walks with her every step of the way.

Read More