A Wednesday Ramble

Wednesday, January 6, 2010


I know I promised a post about Adam today, but I'm tired and uninspired this morning, and I'm on my husband's laptop because my computer's graphics card decided to take a break this week and I can't even process the photos I took the other day to help me feel better after the both-kids-screaming-at-me-while-I-make-the-bed incident.

So you get a sunset that actually propelled me OUT of my parents' house a week after Bredon's birth, a little bit of my homesick, and some "this is where I am today" thoughts.

Pete's parents are in town, and they sat with the kids for an hour or so last night so Pete and I could run to the drugstore and get a nasal aspirator (we got two - one of them didn't end up working anyway - who makes these things, I'd like to know?). We ended up talking for a bit in the car too. It was the first quiet non-kids moment we've had in weeks.

So I shed a few tears that weren't into a pillow or aimed at the ceiling or buried under the covers after everyone was asleep, and asked my husband the God-questions that have been following me around over the last few days, and we went inside feeling like we needed hours more to begin to touch and share and resolve the range of emotion we're both living in right now.

We're such quality time people. Kids don't make much room for that.

The tired is winning right now. Pete's parents are wanting to offer a needed break; they're taking Piper out for a while today. I think it is a God thing.

Right now, she wants Daddy, and he's gone to work. And Mom is not an acceptable substitute. But she'll take ketchup with those sausages.

I am so thankful for the sunshine in our house this week. It helps me feel alive, makes me notice beautiful I would otherwise miss. Makes me miss being able to do anything with my photos post-shoot right now!

I've got a feeling there may be a lot of days like this, when I lose touch with my profound (oh! look at that ego - I consider myself profound??!?), and write from my human. I read somewhere once that being human is the best basis for relationship with God - it lets Him be God, defines my incredible need for Him.

Need I've got figured out. There's a lot of that around here. The question now is "how big is God?" I'm still working on how He relates to me. Hence the continuing meditation on Immanuel. And on the lilies and the sparrows...

And now the littlest one is up, and my time here is up. Enjoy the sunset - I hope it takes your breath away too!





(Image © Informal Moments Photography)

5 comments:

Cassandra Frear said...

I do love the winter sunset.

After knowing you only online for a number of months, I would like to venture to you an idea. I hope you won't think me arrogant. I mean well. And I don't mean that I know what's best here. Not at all. But sometimes a friend can have just the thing I'm looking for.

I considered putting this in an email, but then I thought it might encourage someone else by being here.

Beauty heals. Beauty restores. Beauty is somehow deeper and more powerful than all of the other things we know to be true about our life in the fallen world. Even when
we don't have the answers yet and when life is not organized properly, if we can stop for beauty, however simple, every day, it can do an amazing work of grace on us.

I've noticed that beauty means much to you and that it charges your personal battery like it does mine.

Every time it happens, I'm astounded at how much beauty restores and strengthens me, even when my problems are not yet solved.

But I have to be deliberate about seeking it. Beauty doesn't just come to me often enough to nourish me in the hungry places. I have to search for it and arrange for it.

So here's a prescription: take a beauty vitamin once a day. A picture you adore, a vase of flowers (especially in winter), a bird on the window, music that soars, a book of poetry. As much as possible, surround yourself with it. Don't feel that you have to "earn it" by getting to a place where you feel like there is room for it. Just do it now, in the midst of the mess and the confusion and the sense of being overwhelmed.

I wish -- how I wish -- someone had told me this when I had babies.

I hope it helps.

Maureen said...

May I share with you this poem?

"Love Does That

"All day long a little burro labors, sometimes / with heavy loads on her back and sometimes just with worries / about things that bother only/ burros.

"And worries, as we know, can be more exhausting / than physical labor.

"Once in a while a kind monk comes/ to her stable and brings/ a pear, but more/ than that,

"he looks into the burro's eyes and touches her ears/

"and for a few seconds the burro is free/ and even seems to laugh,

"because love does/ that.

"Love frees."

~ from Love Poems from God by Daniel Ladinsky

Love the moment. It is enough. And it "frees".

sarah said...

Sigh, your weblog is so beautiful, I could come and sit here for a while in silence just to feel restored.

Corinne Cunningham said...

"We're such quality time people. Kids don't make much room for that."

We struggle with that as well. All. The. Time. It seems right when we're getting to the heart of something, someone wakes up. Or someone needs a snack. Or someone just plain old needs. And that's ok, but it's difficult to make time for the type of quality that leads to understanding...

That photo is getting me through the afternoon. Thank you!

Laura said...

Oh, Kelly. I can feel your tired. To the drugstore to buy a nasal aspirator has never been so romantic. Perhaps grabbing these moments when you can will make them more precious? I remember that tired of having the two under two. I'm sending my love, if that helps. You will do more than just make it through. You will capture the sky.

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