A bitter wind that those bare, black trees just can’t hold back.
My hands are raw like a nurse’s, from all that hot scrubbing.
Because though it’s Thanksgiving week here in America,
for me it will be another seven days of much the same,
if I want to look at it that way.
Loading and unloading
dishwashers,
washing machines,
wee ones in and out of beds.
Washing and scrubbing
walls,
floors,
toilets,
faces,
feet.
It’s sacred ground, you know, my home.
Sacred, with Jesus here.
Beside me as I labor, as I stoop.
Just as He did, right before He died.
Servant-like, He washed all the black off His disciples’ feet, just like He’d wash their hearts.
Just like He washed mine.
And so it’s sacred work, too, that I do.
Washing little hands, little feet.
Not easy. Not easy not to pipe up about what’s fair, and who’s pulling their share of it, and what I need to be happy.
No, the work’s not easy, and it goes on and on.
But what’s easy, really easy, is to go looking for something to give a bit more meaning to it all
when the sacred is disguised as tedium.
I know it’s not there, yet how often I go looking
for something to fill that deep, deep hole.
And yet I know, when it comes down to it, where to be filled.
Filled up and overflowing.
Where I can find the strength to serve and keep on serving.
And I can’t afford not to take the time each day to be filled up,
filled up and floating on all that love, all that grace.
He’s here. Beside me.
But I need to turn and look Him in the eye.
And as I scrub, I need to look them in the eye—my little souls.
They won’t sleep under this roof forever.
And while I’m kneeling, sometimes I’ve got to remember to keep them there, pull them to my lap.
Lean with our elbows on the windowsill to see what’s what.
With our eyes, trace the shape of those big, black trees,
the colours in the sky,
catch some geese in flight,
work together on our smile lines.
Acknowledge the sacred.
Because it’s right here.
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She rises up as morning breaks She moves among these rooms alone Before we wake And her heart is so full; it overflows She waters us with love and the children grow
~ Andrew Peterson, “Planting Trees”
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“It was November–the month of crimson sunsets, parting birds, deep, sad hymns of the sea, passionate wind-songs in the pines. Anne roamed through the pineland alleys in the park and, as she said, let that great sweeping wind blow the fogs out of her soul.”
~ L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables
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Avonlea x
Happy Little Sigh
Finding beauty in the everyday ❤
Join me on Facebook/MeWe/Instagram @HappyLittleSigh
Sometimes it helps, remembering where you’ve been.
Other times it’s enough to leave you in a fit of tears.
Make you crawl into bed, yank up the covers
to hide your face,
blot your tears.
It can be regret
for what you did
or didn’t do
that leaves you feeling this way.
Regret for what you did
or what was done to you.
Other times it’s the life you had
but don’t have any more.
And it’s a combination, I suppose, of all those things, that can get me, really get me, make me want to head for bed, cocoon myself in the covers, throw a temper tantrum of the grown-up type.
A photo can remind me. Bring to mind all that once was.
A photo, or basement, maybe. A basement full of boxes that represent my life.
Boxes. Time capsules.
And that’s just what I created, though I didn’t know it those many years ago, when I wrapped my treasured possessions in old t-shirts and lace, arranged them carefully in empty banana boxes until someday when I was older, when I’d want them again, when I’d have a daughter . . .
And I didn’t know, when with slim, tanned hands, I slid the lids off the dozens of silver boxes we received for our wedding, that I wouldn’t hear the rustle of that tissue paper or see the gleaming stainless steel and sparkling crystal again for another ten years . . .
Now, with a house of my own back on this side of the Atlantic, they have been delivered to me—water stained banana boxes and silver gift boxes alike, and a thousand memories come back, along with a thousand questions, as I unpack it all and set on the floor around me.
It brings a smile, leaves an ache, when I remember. When I remember that we only meant to stay in Scotland for a year, though it turned out to be eight. When I recall how desperately I’ve always wanted a daughter, though God knew I needed sons.
And I’d like to claim it doesn’t matter. That I’m above all that.
All that wishing for weekend trips to London.
London, when it was just a few hours’ drive away.
England, with all the birthplaces and resting places of those literary geniuses I so adore.
Scotland. Our home.
Our stone house in the village, with our view of the valley, and the short walk to a friend’s front door.
And the rain—how I learned to love the rain!—and the sound of the kettle when we made our tea.
And the mist, and how it never did stop putting wonder in my heart.
And I’d like to claim I haven’t cried for a little girl I could gift with my tea set, my Anne of Green Gables doll.
Yeah, I could pretend. I could pretend that it’s fine.
It’s just fine with me.
And I don’t have to wrestle. Not one little bit.
But I know, and you know, that would all be one fat lie.
And there’s such a thing, I’ve learned, as pain that’s clean.
Clean pain, like from a surgeon’s knife.
Clean pain, when you learn to see
He knows a better way.
And though I’ve always known it, in theory, that His ways are best, that He’d take you round the world and back again to bring you closer to Him, I didn’t really know it till I’d gone.
Round the world. And back.
And I have to still my heart a little, to realize He’d do all that
just for me.
And so when I doubt, when life seems about as predictable as a Kansas plain, when I’m pretending to let go, but my thumb and finger are pinching, holding tight to something I think I need to make me happy, that I can’t live without, that’s when I’ve got, just got, to remember what He’s done.
On the cross.
In my life.
The adventure! I’d never dared to dream.
My sin! Yet He has drawn me back.
My former life can seem quite rosy, in the scrapbook of my mind.
It’s easy to forget the shadows when we think of the past.
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!”
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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
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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.
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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.”
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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 ❤
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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.
happy little sigh 