Winter Peace

I braved the wind chill yesterday and enjoyed a short walk along my creek.  The sun was brilliant but not much warmth trumped the artic blast.  I wanted to capture the frozen water topped with a dusting of snow.  I'm sure our creek has been frozen in  the twenty years we have lived along it's banks but I haven't imprinted it on my mind or recorded it with my camera. Yesterday I did.  It is beautiful.  This is what the creek looked like last week before the record breaking cold.

And this is what she looked like at 3:30 yesterday afternoon. 

And downstream.

"Silver white winters that melt into Spring....these are a few of my favorite things."

I watched a squirrel scamper across this log to the other side.

 
He was much too fast for my gloved hands operating the camera so you'll have to imagine it.  There were all sorts of footprints in the snow, not all of the human kind.  I think we should invest in a trail camera just to see what might show up down by the creek while we are sleeping.


I didn't last outside but about twenty minutes. My legs were feeling the cold right through my jeans. But I soaked in the stillness and peace of the wintry landscape.

 

  I will enjoy Spring as much as anyone, but the simplicity of winter speaks to my soul and I am savoring the views.

"In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength."  Isaiah 30:15

I love candlelight any time of the year, but on a cold winter evening it is most lovely. 

 

"Your word is a lamp to my feet (my present) and a light for my path (my future)."  Psalm 199:105. My thought in italics.

My mom had her right knee replaced on Monday. She suffered with pain for several years.  Seventeen months ago she had her left knee replaced with great results and it was time to tackle the other one.   I am privileged to be her advocate and support while in the hospital and now a coach and encourager while she recovers at home.  She is a compliant patient.  Mom doesn't fight the healing journey but surrenders to the work and trusts the process of physical therapy, pain management, good nutrition and rest.  She is an example to me of patiently waiting for healing while doing her part to facilitate it.  This example of trust applies to healing of all kinds, physical, emotional, mental or spiritual healing. We do our part and trust God to do His.  Her sense of humor is intact, also helpful in the healing journey.  It's a good idea not to take yourself too seriously.  She gave Dad and I some good laughs the first day at home as she was a touch loopy from the pain medication and lack of uninterrupted sleep.  She told someone on the phone that she likes people to be cheerful and was doing her part to help that day.

I am blessed to observe the devoted care my father gives my mom.  He is tender with her, carefully recording the times she gets her pain meds, applying the ice pack to her knee, listening for her at night if she needs anything, and preparing simple meals.  After 54 years of marriage, love gets deeper and sweeter.  They celebrated their anniversary on the 11th of February, five days before her surgery. 

I have been blessed to have been nurtured in the legacy of grandparents and parents committed to marriage, family and Jesus Christ and His church.  It is what Kevin and I are committed to living out for our children and the grandchildren we are praying over that are yet to come!

I finished one of my Christmas books this week. 

 

The one by Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow.  It is a gentle, thought-provoking and entertaining novel about the life story of Jayber Crow, barber and member of the Port William community written in his voice.  I will be reading more from this author. This is one of my favorite paragraphs from the novel,

"Now I have had most of the life I am going to have, and I can see what it has been.  I can remember those early years when it seemed to me I was cut completely adrift, and times when, looking back at earlier times, it seemed I had been wandering in the dark woods of error.  But now it looks to me as though I was following a path that was laid out for me, unbroken, and maybe even as straight as possible, from one end to the other, and I have this feeling, which never leaves me anymore, that I have been led."

Don't you just love the poetry of those words. And their meaning resonates deep in my spirit.  "For it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose." the Word states in Philippians 2:13.  And Isaiah 46:3-4, "you whom I have upheld since you were conceived, and have carried since birth.  Even to your old age and gray hairs I am he, I am he who will sustain you.  I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you." says our God.  Sweet words to my soul!

I have enjoyed God's presence and beauty this week.  I hope you too are savoring your journey and mining the treasure in your life.

"You are an unceasing spiritual being with an eternal destiny in God's great universe." 

(painting by my brother-in-law, Jonathan Buch)