And Yet . . .

The weight of sin.

The overwhelming sensation of a broken world devouring itself.

I slump.

I weep.

I feel like I'm drowning.

And, yet, the sun shines...

. . . squirrels scamper . . .

. . . birds flit and chirp . . .

. . . flowers bloom and leaves change color drifting lazily to the ground.

My children suffer today. My nation's fabric tears.

I cry for them, shoulders shudder convulsively.

No help can I offer that will better their situations.

It's dark, dark, dark. They hurt hurt hurt.

Pain for them, I feel such pain for them.

And, yet, friends exist and love does, too . . .

. . . honor and dignity can be found all around . . .

. . . recovery happens every day and babies are born to good people . . .

. . . and God has good reasons for everything that happens whether I understand or not.

Hope. Hope. Hope.

Hope lifts me, restores my soul, lightens the heaviness of my heart.

And the sun and the squirrels, the flowers and the leaves,

And honor and dignity and recovery and babies remind me that even though life is lived amidst the sinfulness of mankind and a cursed world, God sees fit to shed His grace on us.

His goodness.

His love.

Autumnal Stirrings

Autumn

Beautiful in Oregon

But . . .
. . . it is the promise of winter around the corner.

Winter in Oregon
Gray
Wet
Gray
Have I mentioned gray?

Depression
Lethargy
Sleepiness

This Oregon Seasonal Affective Disorder hits hardest after New Year's, though it begins to intensify much earlier. . .

And it's bad.

We who experience this loathsome sunless slow-motion suffocation dread it this year more than usual.

We don't know why.

But we do.

Looming forbidding haunting - can't shake it.

The sunshine this week is deceptive - but we'll take it.

We'll take it all in.

We'll throw our chore lists to the winds and soak up the sun, as much as we are able, steeping our minds in it in the hope that its memory will somehow see us through. . .

. . . the gray.

Embrace the Red-Eye Day

The area under my eye is red and puffy from a soap allergy flare-up. It looks like I ran into a door.

I almost didn't go to my morning hair appointment today. Realizing just how much my hair needed a trim up, I went anyway. It needed to be done, ugly eye or no.

After I informed my hair stylist what the red puffiness was, that it didn't hurt, and could she please take care to keep sprays and soaps away, she was very chill. No big deal. We went on to talk about our yard projects, the U.S. Open Tennis Tournament, and how cute her little boy looked when stuffing fresh-picked blackberries into his greedy two-year old mouth under the summer sun.

My stylist, along with other staff and customers in the salon, were interested in interacting with me, not my eye. So encouraged was I by this friendliness that I decided to tackle the grocery shopping which I had felt shy to do because of my shiner.

Again, no one cared. Same smiles. Same courtesy. No staring. No one even seemed to notice.

How silly of me! How great that I fought my vanity and in turn discovered anew that this world is full of great people. We are human beings, after all, with bodies that do what they want when they want. This is understood.

Today's most welcomed reminder lifts my spirits. I hope the sharing lifts your as well.

There is much good in this old world, if we just have the eyes to see it.