She's HERE!!!!!!!!!!

Josh and Jemima's beautiful baby girl has arrived: Cherish Mercy!

All 7 pounds and 4 ounces of sweet perfection.

How did God come up with a creation as wonderful as babies?!

I love her to pieces and can't stop nuzzling her soft face and kissing her!

Spaces in the Heart for Joy

Defeat may serve as well as victory
To shake the soul and let the glory out.
When the great oak is straining in the wind,
The boughs drink in new beauty, and the trunk
Sends down a deeper root on the windward side.
Only the soul that knows the mighty grief
Can know the mighty rapture.
Sorrows come
To stretch out spaces in the heart
for joy!

-- Unknown

Happiness!

Last week it was a gorgeous spring day.

I had determined to work fast and furiously down my to-do list for the day and NOT get distracted with all the wonderful silly little things that leave me frusterated and behind at the end of the day. Before I settled in to answer a ton of overdue emails, though, I was going to clean the living room. Fast. Really quick. It could be done in 10 minutes if I didn't get distracted or answer the phone or anything. Mom and Steve and the girls were out in the garden planting strawberries.

Ready, set, go! I started on the living room. Plumping sofa pillows, re-stacking and putting away the books stacked haphazardly on the rocker.... Legos under the chair that our dear little charges for the day had forgotten when Mom took them to the garden.... Mom's precious cabbage seedlings that they must have bumped over when they ran through earlier....

Suddenly the door burst open. Devin (3) came charging in breathlessly. "Come!" he panted, pulling at my skirt. "Come ou'side wif me! Come!" His voice was urgent, almost as though a rainbow was fading and there would be no time if I didn't hurry.

I could pretend I didn't understand his gibberish, tell him I was busy cleaning... that I couldn't come, couldn't stop. Or tell him to go show my sisters who were already outside with him. But one look at his sparkling brown eyes, the eager expectation of the joy he was about to share with me... How could I not grab his hand and run out the door, eager to see what he wanted to share with me?

I dropped the broom and raced after him. There was no time to ask what it was that I had to see. He was already charging across the yard towards the garden by the time I was coming out the front door. As he glanced back to make sure I was following, the look of sheer joy and happiness on his face was enough to melt my heart.
What on earth? I wondered. What is this treasure that I must see now... this once in a lifetime opportunity?

And then Devin stopped.
Right in front of the trailer backed up to the garden, heaped with topsoil.
I waited expectantly, smiling, nodding... Yes?

He wiped his dirty hands across his little orange shirt, and then threw them up high over his head, sweeping in the panorama. "Dirt!" he cried with a look of utter delight. "Dirt!" he laughed and giggled and grinned at me. "Dirt! Dirt for me and for you... and for evwybody!"

I smiled, then I laughed. This was the surprise.
This is what was so exciting when I was speed-cleaning the living room.

Devin grinned at me. Then he climbed up on the heap of dirt on the trailer and burrowed his hands deeply into the rich, crumbly mass. He giggled again. "Dirt! I garden. I help! I dig dirt!"
And with that he began scooping up the dirt with his hands and filling one of the buckets.

I grinned back at him and touseled his hair. Then I went and found him a little shovel so he could really dig the dirt. He grinned like I had handed him a million dollars and squealed, "Thank you! Now I scoop big dirt!"

I went back into the house... to my busy world of being behind with everything.... or so it seems at times. There were deadlines and studying and project completion dates to stress about. But did it really matter?

We own dirt! Lots of it! Happiness!

I'm trying to keep the Devin perspective. When I think about what I have, I can't help but have a grin like him. :)

Deliberate Gratitude

I had hoped for a chance to write a post of my own for Thanksgiving Day.
After all, I have more than is imaginable to be thankful for today.
And I am grateful, so grateful for what God has given me and for what
He has chosen not to give me.

But after cooking and feasting and visiting with company and washing the dishes several times over, I guess my post will have to wait for another day to be written.

In the mean time, though, Ann Voskamp has once again so eloquently reminded us of the need to deliberately pour the oil of joy and gratitude out in our lives:
Always Enough for Joy

Where I've been, and some thoughts for today...

It's been a whole week since I posted anything... even though it's been my goal every day since last Wednesday to get something up here...

I spent the weekend (Thurs-Sun) in Chicago working on legislative stuff, and then came home and succumbed to a nasty flu with a 104F fever, that has been generously shared between most of our family members. I have my fever down to 103 degrees today, but I'm still not up to catching up on my online life!

Until I'm "up and running" again, here's a few thoughts from C.S. Lewis and John Piper....


If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slim because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.
C.S. Lewis, 1941

That's it! The enemy of worship is not that our desire for pleasure is too strong but too weak! We have settled for a home, a family, a few friends, a television, a microwave oven, an occasion al night out, a yearly vacation, and perhaps a personal computer. We have accustomed ourselves to such meager, short-lived pleasures that our capacity for joy has shriveled. And so our worship has shriveled. Many can scarcely imagine what is meant by a "holiday by the sea" - worshiping the living God!
John Piper, Desiring God, 1986

And I venture to say that it is not necessarily that man's desires are too weak - for in his innate selfishness he seeks whatever he thinks will please him most. I think that mankind (me included) has no idea of the joy of loving, serving, and worshiping the Living God.

Somehow we prefer to believe our own minds that a new car or house or a better job would make us happier than God.

We are far too ignorant and foolish, because we don't take God seriously when He tells us that in His Presence is fullness of joy and at His right hand there are pleasures forever more. And that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him....

All This, And Heaven, Too?!

The last couple of days have been lovely... Cool breezes, leaves slowly turning hues of orange and yellow... the grass is still green, and the sun's been shining. Usually, autumn is not my favorite season as everything turns brown and I become yet another year older, but right now, I'm enjoying fall!

This morning I woke up to the gentle patter of rain on the windows, my little sisters curled cozily under their quilts and the cats purring in a warm huddle on the back porch, trying to stay warm. What a happy way to start Monday.

If only I took more time to stop and enjoy the things of beauty and joy that God puts in my path every day! How lovely... how extravagant God is!

On days when creation seems so full of joy and peace, I have to think of my friend, Abigail, who loves to say, "All this, and heaven, too?!" I have to exclaim the same with her.

Life is hard and ugly and disappointing at times (I know; more on that, coming soon), but when I stop to breathe in the scents around me, joy is everywhere, too! I can choose to dwell on the injustice and ugliness or I can choose joy - because God is good, even when the sun isn't shining, and even when my world is falling apart.

The unchanging, infallible Word of God assures me that
"The Lord is good to all: and His tender mercies are over all His works." (Ps. 145: 9)

Some days it doesn't feel like I was singled out as a recipient of His goodness, but in spite of craziness and sickness, heartache and tears, I KNOW I am a recipient of His goodness, a child who He delights to give good gifts to.

My heart can sing when I pause to remember,
A heartache here is but a stepping stone;
Along a trail that's winding always upwards,
This troubled world is not my final home,
But until then my heart will go on singing,
Until then with joy I'll carry on,
Until the day my eyes behold a city,
Until the day God calls me home.

Stuart Hamblen