7/366

The world-making Word had to fuss with the minutiae of making a living. He had family drama and knuckle-headed friends, temptations and distractions to sort out. He spent much of his life making and fixing things that served a purpose and were lost and forgotten. He knew the value and the vanity of toil. The inauguration of the life of the world to come was made up of hard work, simple pleasures, a small circle of influence, and love. The path of the abundant life runs through the otherwise unremarkable.
- Stephen Crotts in "The Abundant Unremarkable Life" at Sayable blog

The photo captures the inside bench of a trash cart here in Aquiles Serdán, making the quote seem especially appropriate. Day to day life here doesn't typically seem very noteworthy. Yet, the days pass and slowly slowly, we notice fractions of change, and indeed, "the abundant life runs through the otherwise unremarkable."

5/365

"Yes, I am a dreamer, for a dreamer is one who can find his way by moonlight, and see the dawn before the rest of the world."  Oscar Wilde

I wake up to sewer smells in the bathroom and to smokey smells in the living room and I wonder how much my life expectancy might be lowered by the various fumes I inhale around here. And I can hear chickens and dogs and a train in the distance making morning sounds before morning sights appear. But then I go outside and turn for the view outside my front gate as I walk to work this morning and the promise of the day ahead, and I count it all grace to see the dawn before the rest of the world.

63/365

The good news is that finally, finally, I won a round of lotería. The bad news is that we were playing at the good-bye party for my buddy and office mate so I found my excitement a bit tempered.
And then my husband accidentally gave away my prize.
Alas. Some days are like that.

Does anyone else remember days as good news, bad news? I often wonder, am I the only one who perpetually wrestles with life's opposites? The only one who sees the sides and can't exactly be completely for one or the other? Does anyone else contend with those inner arguments while living very much in the out-there-right-now?

And then I found this essay, and realized, maybe others think on these sorts of ideas, too. Maybe I'm not the only one quite sure she doesn't have all the answers. Loree Ferguson Wilbert writes:

My desires must be for something higher, God himself and his kingdom.  

This is why I glad to not be a registered anything or pledge allegiance to anything on this earth. My allegiance is to God, to his order of things, and my optimism is rooted in the coming kingdom, not in the fruition of all my "disordered loves." The world is in disarray: children slaughtered in schools by people with guns made for slaughtering, mental gymnastics abound by barely clad women talking about objectification, wars and rumors of wars, and everyone thinks they're the real optimist, the ones with the real solutions. But God's kingdom gives us permission to grieve at what is while hoping for what is to come at the same time—to be true eternal optimists.  

It might be on the picket lines that our points are made, but it's at the tables where progress is made. It's there where we can be honest about what is terribly, terribly wrong, but also true about what is beautifully, achingly good. 

Tonight at the table we didn't make much progress. But we ate really well and we laughed a lot and we were together, minus a couple, for the last time for a while. And all of that was indeed "achingly good." I want to keep erring on the side of "true eternal optimist."

62/365

Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul alike. 
- John Muir, The Yosemite (1912)

(an afternoon spent walking through Bentsen State Park)

340/365

DPP 6-

(my little Christmas tree)

"Now Christmas is built on the beautiful and intentional paradox; that the birth of the homeless should be celebrated in every home."
GK Chesterton

318/365

Something like 13 days and 2700 miles later and there remains only 550 more sky miles until I am home.

Well, sort of.
What is home?

I haven't lived in the town where I was born for 45 years (and actually, that wasn't a town, but officially, an Air Force base hospital, perhaps a sign of things to come...). I have never considered calling that "home."

At Christmas time, I will visit the town where I grew up, where a few family members and friends still live- but I'll spend my days as a guest in other's houses and my nights in a hotel room. Although it is familiar and a favorite place of mine, I no longer consider it "home".

Sure, "home" would be the place where I live right now. But depending on what day of the week, that might change, too. No matter what side of the border I am in, when I leave, I say I'm "going home." I qualify my home by location, but recognize the temporal nature of that, too. I mean, a quick count reminds me that I have lived in at least 20-something homes in my life.

In her commentary on homesickness, Jen Pollock Michel writes,

"As writer Julian Barnes put it in his novel Nothing to Be Frightened Of, we live with “the vicious awareness that this is a rented world.” The grass withers, and the flowers fade: Ours is an impermanent life. At the very least, home is a steadying consolation when the lights go out."

I confess, I am easily homesick. My husband teases that I really can't be away from normal life for more than a few days. I think he exaggerates, but I certainly recognize the truth in that statement. I do love to travel, and I do love to return home...
wherever that may be.

284/365

"Grace, Meimei." Charles looked at his daughter. "You are very smart, too. You know that love too much is okay. That is the best thing in life. Love too much."
- The Wangs Vs. The World by Jade Chang

279/365

"No, gratitude born from humility is not a gratitude rooted in having more than someone else. It is a gratitude rooted in having anything at all."
Hannah Andersen, Humble Roots

Days that don't go the way you expect, they are humbling, aren't they? My day began with an incredibly ordinary expectation that things would go as they always do.
Except they didn't.

Oh, it wasn't anything life changing, nothing insurmountable that didn't work itself out by the end of the morning. And yet, it became easy to be distracted. Still, as I reflected later, my encouragement, my solace, remains that none of the events surprised my God, the Good Shepherd. I count myself as a people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand.

And so I give thanks for the quiet of morning, for the beauty of golden daybreak hues, for the sparkly dew and for the cool breeze of fall. For friends that perhaps grow more dear in human frailty. For the wrongs that are corrected with a few papers and signatures and a little bit of time. For lunch with my man and for the excitement of travel ahead. For "gratitude rooted in having anything at all."

244/365

"There is always gratulatory music in a contented soul; the Spirit of grace works in the heart like new wine, which under the heaviest pressures of sorrow will have a vent open for thankfulness: this is to be content.”

Thomas Watson, The Art of Divine Contentment

224/365

"To encourage one another to pray is not legalism; it is breathing."
- Gloria Furman, Missional Motherhood

SaveSave

200/365

For this is one of the miracles of love; it gives... a power of seeing through its own enchantments and yet not being disenchanted.

To see, in some measure, like God. His love and His knowledge are not distinct from one another, nor from Him. We could almost say He sees because He loves, and therefore loves although He sees.

- C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

189/365

The great mistake made by most of the Lord's people is in hoping to discover in themselves that which is to be found in Christ alone.
- AW Pink (as found in Transforming Grace by Jerry Bridges)

182/365

The sun radiated white bright and white hot. The long days of the last week wore us down a bit and at the very first misunderstanding, our words came out swift and short and searing. My first choice would be to run and hide but that's not a choice this day. And of course, it has to be a day like this when I find myself smack in the middle of a book on transforming grace...

     "I need to be broken apart and put back into a different shape by that merging of things human and divine, which is really screwing up and receiving grace and love and forgiveness rather than receiving what I really deserve. I need the very thing that I will do everything I can to avoid needing.

     The sting of grace is not unlike the sting of being loved well, because when we are loved well, it is inextricably linked to all the times we have not been loved well, all the times we ourselves have not loved others well, and all the things we've done or not done that feel like evidence against our unworthiness. Love and grace are such deceivingly soft words- but they both sting like hell and then go and change the shape of our hearts and make us into something that we couldn't create ourselves to be."

- Accidental Saints by Nadia Bolz-Weber

143/365

True friends are hard to find. 

They stick closer than family, and often know you better. They pray bigger things for you than you pray for yourself. They believe with you when your faith is weak. They make space for you when life falls apart, and they rejoice with you when all is well. Most importantly, true friends remind you in every encounter who and what is most important.

- "True Friends are Hard to Find" by Kelly Needham, Desiring God blog

We sit across from the table from one another at the no frills Mexican restaurant on the edge of my 'hood. We no longer need to look at the menu- the order is always the same, always tacos, juevos and tocino, tostado for me, and  juevos, tocino, papas y queso, tostado for her. We cover the eggs with warm salsa, spooned from a plastic cup. We start with coffee and then accept refills about 4 times, the last one reluctantly, before we recognize that one more cup may lead to all-day tremors. We have a list, because time passes way too quickly and we are easily distracted and there are things that have to be spoken out-loud, too complicated for text and the quick crossings of life during our normal week.

About an hour into the early morning rendezvous, she receives a text from home.
Where are you?
She sends a picture of me holding coffee.
A smiley emoji comes as a reply, and a moment later,
Good for you.
And then the dot-dot-dot of activity on the other side of screen. At the ding of a new text, my friend shows me her screen and Proverbs 27:17-
Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another.

And with that, both of us take a deep breath of profound thankfulness. 

124/365

In friendship...we think we have chosen our peers. In reality a few years' difference in the dates of our births, a few more miles between certain houses, the choice of one university instead of another...the accident of a topic being raised or not raised at a first meeting--any of these chances might have kept us apart. But, for a Christian, there are, strictly speaking no chances. A secret master of ceremonies has been at work. Christ, who said to the disciples, "Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you," can truly say to every group of Christian friends, "Ye have not chosen one another but I have chosen you for one another." The friendship is not a reward for our discriminating and good taste in finding one another out. It is the instrument by which God reveals to each of us the beauties of others.
― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

123/365

To pay attention, this our endless and proper work.
- Mary Oliver, White Pine: Poems and Prose

110/365

You must be imaginative, strong-hearted. You must try things that may not work, and you must not let anyone define your limits because of where you come from. Your only limit is your soul. What I say is true - anyone can cook... but only the fearless can be great.
- Gusteau in Ratatouille

Haven’t I commanded you? Strength! Courage! Don’t be timid; don’t get discouraged. God, your God, is with you every step you take.
- Joshua 1:9 (MSG)

108/365

The will-o'-the-wisp, end-of-the-rainbow, daydream idea of happiness, of happy marriages, happy families, happy people, and "having a right to happiness" doesn't touch upon reality.
   What is family? A family is a blending of people for whom a career of making a shelter in the time of storm is worth a lifetime! A Christian family is meant to be different because of its knowledge that human beings are significant in this life and throughout eternity. A Christian family has been given enough in God's verbalized Word to know that when one part of the body hurts, the rest of the body is affected and does something to help.
- Edith Schaeffer, What is a Family?

101/365

“Nothing
would be
easier without
you,
because you
are 
everything,
all of it-
sprinkles, quarks, giant
donuts, eggs sunny-side up-
you
are the ever-expanding
universe
to me.” 
- Kate DiCamillo, Flora and Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures

94/365

"This work is about appreciating the flow of the moment, the rhythm and currents and eddies of life, rather than neatly packaging the world into perfectly formed little jewels. . . . Many moments are mundane and seem worthless, but they form and shape our lives."
- Photographer Paul Graham, as quoted in "A Shimmer of Possibility," by Laura Lynn Brown in Art House Blog