Winter Wanderings

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This week is the letter W.

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I'm not a fan of winter but even I have to admit there's a beauty to winter that just can't be found in any other season.

It's the time of year when I do a lot of mental wandering. I think about the past year, what I did and what I didn't do.

It's a pensive week for me, a time I'm finding I look forward to more and more. Maybe it comes with age and the little bits of wisdom I glean with the passing of time.

It's a time of looking forward too. A time to think about what I want to change and do, what I want to become. A time for dreaming and planning, knowing that plans change faster than corn grows.

But that's okay.

Plans are stepping stones that get me to the next turn, the next thing.

My job in the midst of all the change is to stay flexible and obedient. And there's the crux of it all for me. Obedience. Listening for and to my Savior's voice. Being available and willing.

How does that look for this coming year? Where will that path take me? Time will tell as I take each step as it comes, trusting my Father and holding tight to His hand.

What about you? What do you do with this week between Christmas and New Year's?

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Heart Highways

In 2009 God blessed me with a dog I never thought I'd have and I named her Gracie because she's a tangible reminder of God's grace in my life. In the many months I've had her, she's provided comfort and reassurance of God's constant love, presence and purpose in my life and she's taught me many things. Like most dogs, Gracie is a creature of habit. Although not all of her habits are good, one of them is stellar. She watches over us and protects us with her big bark. Her consistency in this became crystal clear early one morning. There, across the road, was a path Gracie had worn through the snow with her constant trotting back and forth. That got me thinking about a verse I had read just moments before...

How blessed is the man whose strength is in You,
in whose heart are the highways to Zion.
~Psalm 84:5

All of us have paths in our heart. Some of those paths might lead to a friend's house and sympathetic ear, or a family member that has always been a source of strength and comfort to us. Other paths might not end in such nice places. They might lead you straight to worry or depression or fear. The path you want to make into a highway is the path you take to the throne of God.

The inhabitants of one will go to another, saying, “Let us go at once to entreat the favor of the Lord, and to seek the Lord of hosts; I will also go.” ~Zechariah 8:21

Sometimes the landscape of my heart looks like my yard does after the kids have been outside to play in the snow. Tracks everywhere. There's no way I could follow their path after they've been outside playing for a few hours. That's not how I want my heart to be. That's not how I want my life to be either. I want those around me to be able to easily follow my path to a favorite place—the throne room of God.

That makes me wonder, have we traveled the path to God often enough to etch a path? On days when the going is rough and it's dark or foggy all around us, having a well beaten path to follow to God's throne room is a great help, especially when we're so exhausted it's hard to place one foot in front of the other. In fact, when we're that tired, a highway is what we really want. Smooth going and easy to follow.

Come and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord and to the house of the God of Jacob, that He may teach us about His ways and that we may walk in His paths. ~Micah 4:2

Let's wear wide, smooth paths to God's presence by traveling there many times a day. We want our paths to be as easy to follow as Gracie's path through snow was.

I was glad when they said to me, “Let us go to the house of the Lord.” Psalm 122:1

If we want highways in our hearts then we need to consistently walk the same path. An occasional trip may leave enough footprints to see and follow but it will not wear a path.

Gracie's highway went to the far edge of the orchard, one of her favorite places to hang out, and it was a perfect example of how I want my heart to look.

I want a clearly defined path straight to the throne room of God. Don't you?

So tell me, how's your path looking? I'm gonna go work on mine... 

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Shining

When I looked out the window awhile ago, this is what I saw.

The trees where shining. The sun had peeked through the heavy clouds and was making all the ice encrusted trees glisten. It was beautiful, especially with all the dark, stormy weather we've been having.

But yanno, the sun often peeks out and shines on the trees like it did. What made it so noticeable and beautiful was the coating of ice on each and every branch and twig. The ice that was a big part of the storm. The ice that was weighing down the tree limbs and rattling with every hint of a breeze. Without the ice there would have been little beauty—just winter trees in a patch of sunshine.

So often when storms overtake our lives we cry out because of the ice that seems to coat us and weigh us down. When a breeze goes past we rattle, thinking only of uncomfortable and heavy the ice is. Yet when others look at us they may see the radiance of the Son shining off us and through us. Sometimes we need the ice to reflect the Son.

Heavenly Father, help us keep our eyes so fixed on You that when the ice comes into our lives we wait eagerly for the Sonshine so we can sparkle and dance for you. Help us to accept the ice and shine for You so that beauty can come from the storms. In Your Son's Name, amen.

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The Persistence of Peppermint

Outside my back door, beside my chimney lives a peppermint plant that has withstood many attacks. It has lived through weed pullings, being stomped on by five children, and weed wackings—and that's not counting the ash and creosote that has leached out the chimney through the years. After each assault the peppermint grows back as big and as beautiful as ever. My husband considers the peppermint plant a nuisance because it is not where it's supposed to be, but, secretly I love it because of where it is. In past years it has amazed me with it's persistence, but never more than it did last month.

After our first ice storm I went out with my camera in an attempt to keep my mother happy by providing her with pictures of her grandkids sledding. An icicle lured me around the back corner of the house, but I quickly lost interest in that when I spotted the bit of green encased in ice. It was my peppermint plant.

Pushing up through last year's dead leaves and stems was a perfectly formed baby peppermint sprig. It had grown, and was flourishing, in spite of winter. I was in awe and as I hunched down there, studying it and I knew there was a lesson there for me.

We're to be like that peppermint plant: persistently getting up when we're knocked down. Persistently growing and blooming when the conditions seem to be against us. By getting up when we're knocked down, and blooming after we've been pruned, we bring glory to God. Jesus is manifested in our lives when we grow through difficult, even impossible, situations.

Paul says it well in 2 Corinthians 4:8-9.
“We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not despairing; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down but not destroyed; always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body.”

That little peppermint sprig was encased in ice, but it was beautiful in its crystal coating. Even in the midst of great adversity it was glorifying God and it reminded me, inspired me, to persistently live and shine for Him so that others might see Christ in me.

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