Hello!

Hello all you friendly-type readers! Thanks to Jen and Marisa for missing Thankful Thursday and making me feel loved. The kiddos and I are feeling much better. We spent last week in Wisconsin Dells enjoying some much needed family vacation time. We all had a lot of fun! I'll try to post some pictures soon.

Spring is always a good time for me to step back and evaluate, try to find some fresh focus and get priorities in line. I love this time of year, and although we've had snow for several days now (weird!), I'm anxious for the warmer weather that brings with it outdoor play and gardening! I'm also excited with the anticipation of embracing spiritual growth along with all the green growing stuff outside.

Mid-Winter I purchased two books by Gunilla Norris on seeing the sacred in the everyday, Being Home and A Mystic Garden. I savored the beautiful words in the first through the Winter, bringing them into my own moments of daily contemplation. But I happened to save the second to begin reading in Spring, thinking it would be good reading as I start my own gardening. When packing for vacation, I slipped this book in my bag with hopes of stealing myself away for a few minutes of quiet reading time on our trip. Fittingly, as I sat by the window of the house we were staying in, watching the snow fall and listening to the wind whip through the trees, I read these words about the Winter seasons of our lives:

"How full of invisible life is the garden you've been given.

At this very moment, you are in company with everything.

Trust does not need visible signs...

Everything is dormant in the cold. My spirit, too, is spilled and scattered. I seem to be at a stand still. Do I know that? Or is it that, connected to God, one somehow moves forward, even in sleep, in confusion, in turmoil, in cold? Benumbed, we may wonder if perhaps it is in quietude, in seeming deep freeze, that God enters our depth without interference?"

Yes....even in the dead of Winter, something is happening. It's in the Spring that life stirs and breaks through the surface...and we know it's been there all along. Sometimes God's work is quiet, but always, it's there.