A Dozen Cosies to Warm Your Heart & Your Hands and Bless Your Week . . .
Spread a blanket and have a picnic lunch inside. Or a candlelit picnic at night when the children are abed?
Buy a bouquet of fresh flowers and divide them up in jars around your house. Don’t forget your bathroom and your bedside table. And don’t forget to give them a smell.
Rake some leaves and jump in the pile. Go in and warm your hands and your soul with some tea.
4. Bake something with cinnamon. Apple pie?
5. Go for a walk and pray until your nose and cheeks are red. Then go in and warm up with some tea.
6. Watch Anne of Green Gables and laugh and sigh when Anne is “in the depths of despair.”
“And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love,may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”
The chill of autumn always felt colder to my soul than to my bones.
But it wasn’t just the cold. It was the light.
At the first leaf I saw wave goodbye to summer, I felt an ache inside. A nauseated, physical ache that felt like a broken heart.
For I knew the darkness was coming. Those days when the sun wouldn’t shine, and the night would come sooner, and the bitter cold would bite.
Those unnatural months of rising in the dark, when the earth seems to say “Keep sleeping,” but the world is waiting for you to be somewhere by eight.
Ever since my teenage years, it was those days that most rumpled the pages of my Bible. Sent me searching for the face of real Light. Reminded me of the world’s empty promises—for in the end, no matter what we do, death will come. It will come to us all.
But I turned to my Bible. I knew its secret.
That Christian’s aren’t buried, they are planted, to one day spring forth with new life.
Like bulbs. Like the red and white tulip bulbs I planted on Saturday.
In-between the hours of autumn rain there was a window. An hour or two of blue sky and warmth. And so I hunted out my gardening gloves and spent half an hour chatting with the earthworms. Digging holes and tucking those glossy white bulbs into the earth. Imagining the colour they will one day bring.
And I don’t feel it as much this year.
The shadows, they don’t seem as dark.
Even though it’s getting on now—nearly November.
But there are days left ahead. Days of colour. Days of mild coolness and sun.
And I’m taking pictures.
Recording blessings.
Eating donuts and apple cider every chance I get.
And when I feel that little ache, that unsettled ripple in my soul that says, “You’re missing something. You’re not getting it quite right,” then I know. I know I have to rumple some pages again. I have to stop and listen to the voice that whispers through the trees, and through the breeze, and through the harvest, “Listen. Listen. I am the Light!”
~~~
Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow.
~ James 1:17
~~~
Autumn Ambience to enjoy with your morning cup of tea…
Not that it’s always easy. The getting started of a day.
Not when my bed’s so warm and the house so dark, and the children woke me in the night three times, at least.
And while my mind swirls with the to-dos of today,
beneath the surface of these plans, beneath all that I know will keep me busy, rushing from here to there,
lie my deeper dreams and goals.
All my heart longs to do and be for my family.
All the words I long to write.
And they look like a mountain from here. Like I’ve been given a wheel barrow and a shovel and told I have to move it.
Like I have to move a mountain.
But of course, I can’t.
And so no wonder it’s easier to stay in bed. Slip back into those dreams.
But this new day awaits. It’s time.
And though the stars are still out,
I can smell the bread.
The first gift of today, and there will be many.
And just waking, well isn’t that a gift?
And hasn’t the one thing that really needs to be done
already been done by Jesus?
In that, I can rest.
With that, I can pull back the curtains,
with hot cup in hand venture a step or two outside
to hear the first bird sing.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Lamentations 3:22-24
Because of the LORD’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. I say to myself, “The LORD is my portion; therefore I will wait for him.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Morning-Land
Old English songs, you bring to me A simple sweetness somewhat kin To birds that through the mystery Of earliest morn make tuneful din,
While hamlet steeples sleepily At cock-crow chime out three and four, Till maids get up betime and go With faces like the red sun low Clattering about the dairy floor.
~Siegfried Sassoon
And finally, a word from Jane . . .
“What fine weather this is! Not very becoming perhaps early in the morning, but very pleasant out of doors at noon, and very wholesome—at least everybody fancies so, and imagination is everything.”
~ Jane Austen, November 17, 1798, in a letter to her sister, Cassandra.
Avonlea x
Find me on . . .
Instagram/Facebook/MeWe @happylittlesigh
Happy Little Sigh
Finding beauty in the everyday ❤
❤ Fore more literary inspiration for your home & a PERIOD DRAMA in your inbox EVERY Friday sign up here! ❤
Read one of Jane Austen’s works as if it’s my first time?
Oh, could I please?
And the answer
is yes!
Scottish author Alexander McCall Smith, author of The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, has been asked to write a 21st century version of Emma, Jane Austen’s fifth novel .
He said the request was “like being asked to eat a box of delicious chocolates.” If that’s the case, then reading it will, I think, “taste” even better! McCall Smith’s writing is so full of warmth, humour, wit, and colour that I expect much from these contemporary versions.
The book is set to be in bookstores next autumn. Too long, I know!
But a version of Sense and Sensibility by author Joanna Trollope will be out this month.
Hurrah!
And versions of other Austen novels are set to follow.
I was like that once. From this side of the Atlantic, going to Scotland seemed like a one-time thing. But the place got to me. Once I’d wandered the cobblestone streets of that fifteenth century university where I studied, stood on the cliff tops overlooking a ruined castle and felt the sea air make my hair dance, sat in my dorm room reading Pride and Prejudice while the tree outside my room turned from winter to spring, the place got into my blood, got into my soul.
A few weeks in, there was a gathering, a cup of tea, a charming red-head with an accent so thick I had to smile and wanted to cry, and did. Three years later we were married, kilts and empire waistlines and all.
We only meant to stay in Scotland for a year, though it turned out to be eight.
And I never did believe it, even after all that time, that I could be so blessed.
I could have stayed forever.
There, in that green corner of Scotland where we lived. As if Scotland has a corner that’s not that color. That’s not green.
Yes, I would have been quite happy to keep our home at the foot of the highlands, with our view of the village and the valley and the hills beyond. Our home and my great white kitchen with those walls thick enough to park your car, and our winding staircase, and the window seat John built me, where you could close the curtains and open a book and get lost for a while.
The nursery, where we spent the tenderest moments with our boys, singing lullabies, kissing toes.
The paths we walked—field and forest, castle and garden, playing Pooh Sticks, collecting rocks.
And I loved it.
But sometimes, sometimes you can love a thing too much.
You can love a thing, love a person, so much that your heart grows gray.
Gray and cold as stone.
I looked green enough, I’m sure, from the outside.
But not all green is grass.
Because I never missed a Sunday. Bible beside my bed never collected that much dust.
But I’m quite sure, if you’d gone looking, you would have seen the moss.
And moss means damp, and sitting, and rotting, and feeling comfortable too long.
It means clinging on for safety to what’s not really safe. It means being happy to linger in the shadows when you should be chasing light.
It wasn’t easy leaving. I must have left a trail across the country where I tried to dig in my nails and hold on tight.
But I’ve felt God’s love like I’ve never known it, and I’ve seen that He will take you places if He knows it will bring you closer to Him.
God will lead you to green pastures. He will lead you to a desert.
He will take you halfway round the world.
And He will bring you back.
He will bend you far like a reed, or wrap you up and cradle you like a newborn.
Whatever it takes.
Sometimes God borrows human hands, to cup your face and turn your eyes to His.
Other times His hands look like painful goodbyes, or a loss so big you don’t think you’ll ever smile again. Or a turn of luck so grand your mouth hangs open. Wide open. And you’ve got to dance.
Whatever it takes.
Whatever it takes to make sure you’ll be with Him. Today. Tomorrow. Forever.
He’ll chase you like He’s been chasing us humans from the beginning. He’ll forgive you again and again, make a way to bridge the bottomless gap. Pursue you, even when you’re running. Even when your heart is so gray and your deeds so black you make Him weep.
And what else could you call Love?
Some people are scared to go. Others are scared to stay.
But it’s not the going or the staying that matters.
Not really. Not to Jesus.
It’s what’s in your hands.
It’s where you’re looking.
It’s the color of your heart.
Psalm 37:23-24, Isaiah 43:22
You might also be inspired by . . .
And so on my birthday — some things that always get me . . . happy sigh?
For night is the end of another day, another twenty-four hours that seem to have taken me no closer. No closer to my dreams. To my goals. And so in my worry I mull them over.
Dreams, goals, regrets . . .
Dreams for this house, like those black and white photos of the children I want printed out and framed, and the upcycled furniture I’d like when we finally remodel the breakfast room. I could lie awake for hours planning it all out in my head. As if someday I’ll get there, you know, to my real life, my forever life, where every closet and drawer is organized and my house is decorated like a Pinterest fantasy.
My real life, where I’m fitter and stronger and have smoother skin than I did at eighteen.
My real life, where I have hours every day to sit in the garden and paint, and read, and write, and play with the children, and somehow the cooking, and cleaning, and shopping doesn’t take much time at all.
My real life, as if it’s a place where I’ll one day arrive. As if one day, everything that needs to be done will be done.
It’s easy to forget with all that planning for tomorrow. Easy to forget that my children will never be as young as they are today. That I will never be as young as I am today. That we can never get today back.
It’s easy to fill my days and fill my mind and hold onto these plans, these goals, as if this is all there is.
But then I catch myself. Lying in my bed at night, I remember. I feel the smallness of myself in this universe. The frailty of my body as I lie there on the mattress listening to my baby and my husband breathe. Even if we eat nothing but organic, they are not forever. I am not forever. For a while. A good while, I hope, but not forever.
And as a wife and a mother, how could I sleep with that, how could I live with that if I didn’t know. If when my children realize that the end will come for me, for them, and the tears pool in their eyes, I couldn’t lift my little person onto my lap and hold him close and whisper “Yes! Yes!”
And If I didn’t know, if I hadn’t seen, that what He says more than anything is “Fear not.”
“Don’t be afraid!”
And so I go.
Sometimes I creep, when I feel how much I’ve missed the mark. How I’ve let Him down that day. With head hung low I crawl toward Him, always toward Him, because I know He wants me there. That He’s happy, miraculously, not just to welcome the repentant but the reluctant and the angry, too.
I lie there by his feet and soon there comes His hand upon my head. “Daughter.”
Other times I run, through a field of wildflowers and hazy sunlight, my arms outstretched, and I meet Him. I meet the warmth of His robes and the strength of His love, and like a little girl I’m lifted and swung. “Child.”
The colors blur, and I know that’s home. That’s forever.
And there’s peace.
Peace like Lucy clutching Aslan’s mane and burying her face there and knowing it’s going to be all right.
No matter what, I’m safe, and it’s going to be all right.
And what could be more important than having them with me?
There in that field. In those arms. In that eternity.
There, when this house and everything in it, and every worry I ever had will be long gone. There, where everything will finally be complete and time . . .
well, it will just stand still.
We’re all together, with Him,and time is standing still.
This house—will they even remember? The color of the walls, if the furniture was scratched?
And if they remember, will I let them think it’s worth a wisp of worry?
Or will I reach out and grasp hold of this time, these hours that slip so easily into days and years, and
instead of making lists of all that’s wrong,
make lists of all that’s right?
And will I help my children, and each person beckoned through the doors of this house, to smile over every seen and unseen gift, every finer thing, and to point them, always point them, to the Giver?
And how can I remember where to point unless I keep my eyes there,
All those lazy days you planned and enjoyed are gone . . . or never seemed to come about at all.
And you’re not sure how it happened because, why, yesterday was just the fourth of July, and the time was meant to go slower, and the days were meant to be longer, and you’re just not ready to put your child into the next grade up, or go into the next grade yourself.
And you can already feel yourself drooling over tropical islands and craving some vitamin D.
And please don’t anyone mention that C word.
Christmas?
Mmmm . . . that’s right.
But aren’t we all happy when it comes?
I mean, imagine that it didn’t.
Imagine no family, no friends, no gifting, no baking, no singing, no decorations, no lights.
No light.
But there is, and we do.
Have Christmas. Have Light.
Even in winter.
And Light has a name.
“At the name of Aslan each one of the children felt something jump in its inside. Edmund felt a sensation of mysterious horror. Peter felt suddenly brave and adventurous. Susan felt as if some delicious smell or some delightful strain of music had just floated by her. And Lucy got the feeling you have when you wake up in the morning and realize that it is the beginning of the holidays or the beginning of summer.”
~ C.S. Lewis
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
And Light’s other name is Love.
Love that can get you through the winter.
Or a winter of your soul.
Love that comes after you, with a deafening roar and a mighty leap.
Even if you don’t know it, or you know it and you’re running away.
Winter.
It will come, no matter how we dig in our heals and will summer to stay.
But lighting our path through to next spring will be the celebration of the birth of a King.
A King who will, one day, make an end to
darkness
of
every
kind.
Journey with me? Into autumn, through the winter, as we look for Love, look for Light?
happy little sigh 