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
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 ❤
❤ Fore more literary inspiration for your home & a PERIOD DRAMA in your inbox EVERY Friday sign up here! ❤
happy little sigh 