I love this saying. Now, before you start feeling really sorry for me (or really offended), let me clarify: there wasn’t much that was ugly about today. The very beginning of the day was rough, because I’m still not sleeping well and I had to be up early enough to feed myself and Koski, go over my sermon, get dressed and get to the church for 9am. For a non-morning person who hasn’t been sleeping well, that’s a lot to deal with before 9am.

But the day only went up from there – a great time of study with our Shepherding group, a great worship service, a wonderful celebration of my 1yr anniversary with St. Andrew’s, a great couple of meetings after all that. It was a busy day, but a really good day.

Still, if you had to ask me to find the beauty in this day, while I would definitely acknowledge all of that, none of that would be what I would talk about. Instead, I would tell you about this moment, after all of that had been accomplished, when Koski and I were just coming home from our walk. We were walking up the sidewalk toward my house, and the sun struck me in my eyes, and I had to shut them. Then I took one more step and I realized I could open my eyes again, because I was standing in a shadow. I opened them and saw how the sun was streaming around the trunk of the maple tree in my front yard, and I just stood there for a moment…shocked by the beauty of the sunlight.

Sometimes beauty is to be found in the smallest moments. Sometimes it is hard to find on an ugly day. Sometimes it abounds in the kindness of others and the world that God has created.

Wherever beauty is to be found – I want to encourage you (and me!) to take the time to find it. Because any day in which you find beauty, will be a day that was not wasted.

So I completely forgot to blog last night. In fact, I remembered, but not until I was cozy in my bed and I decided at that point that it just wasn’t happening.

So far, 2012 has been all about messing with my routines. I got sick and didn’t have the energy to do my normal walking. I couldn’t continue with the strength training routine I’d begun, either. My sleep is off because I’m coughing a lot still. And then last night I forgot to blog.

All of this has me feeling vaguely unsettled. I’d love to be one of those people who just takes life however it comes and is all spur-of-the-moment. But I’m not. I like a routine and I like a plan.

So I am hoping (and praying) that this week will be back to routine. And soon enough I’ll be posting about how I need a break from the routine!

 

After about a week of feeling absolutely terrible I am so pleased to report that I have turned a corner with this stupid cold. I am on my way to being better. I’m still coughing, and you can still hear the congestion in my voice, but i am vastly better than I was yesterday. And I am praying that I will wake up tomorrow feeling vastly better than I do now.

I have been mostly locked in my house for the duration of the week. But I have plans for tomorrow. I am going to try not to over-do it. But I will go into the office for a bit, and spend some time with friends. I’m hoping to get Koski out for a couple of short walks as well.

I guess we’ll see how MUCH of a corner I have turned!

So I followed a pin on Pinterest the other day that brought me to this article. And specifically to this photo:

I just adore this photo. It’s a gorgeous example of black and white photography.

But it also speaks to me on another level. Now, I know that animals don’t have the same emotions as humans. I know that humans have a bad habit of personifying animals. But I also have observed something in the animals in my house. They do have a range of emotion. Koski looks at me with sympathy when I’m coughing up a lung. Spot curls up against my leg in the middle of the night.

This evening, Koski went up to Spot (the fatcat) and kissed her face. Spot closed her eyes, and I swear you could hear the sigh she gave right across the room.

This photo, to me says: It’s ok, all shall be well.

And don’t we all want someone to lean their forehead against ours and whisper that sometimes?

I am still feeling way under the weather.  And it’s starting to really bum me out. So today I’m trying another tactic. I’m not dreaming the day away. Instead, I’m counting up some small joys that have come my way in the last 24hrs. Here we go:

-Koski bobbing for ice cubes in her water bowl (When I put fresh water down for the dog (and the fatcat), I fill the bowl from the water dispenser in my fridge. But because of the size and shape of the bowl, it ends up being crushed ice and water in the bowl. Well, Koski LOVES ice cubes. So much so, that instead of drinking the water, she begins bobbing for ice cubes as soon as I put the bowl down. I discovered this reality this morning when I heard a bubbly sound coming from the direction of the water bowl and turned to see Koski with half her face submerged as she chased some ice. JOY!)

-an email from a friend (You know who you are, and your sympathy brought a smile to my face! I will email you back once I get the ability to think straight back. 🙂 JOY! )

-cold brewed coffee (A friend turned me on to this in the summer. Turns out, you can submerge a 1/2 cup of coffee grounds in 2 litres of water for about 12 hrs in the fridge, strain out the grounds and have yourself a mighty fine cold-brewed coffee. It never gets bitter like hot-brewed coffee can. And if you a cup of that and mix it with a cup of vanilla almond milk, you end up with something that tastes like an iced latte and only costs 2 pointsplus! JOY!)

-a good book (Just finished Mocking Jay (book #3 in the Hunger Games) and it was awesome. It was brutal, but so engrossing. I loved the characters and hated the characters. I hoped for them, cheered for them, and couldn’t stop thinking about them. Also, reading a book at 5am because you can’t sleep due to all the coughing is a good way to spend time that would otherwise be wasted. JOY!)

Sometimes…you just have to count the good things in life.

 

 

Now, I know I just posted the other day that the past few weeks had gone too quickly….but now I’m in the midst of a brutal cold (seriously, I’m trying not to complain too much, but this cold is the worst!!) and I so wish I could hit fast forward.

I wish I could find myself inside the picture above. Doesn’t it look like a great place to be? I bet it is warm in that picture. And that the water is just the right amount of cool to make the heat bearable.

I am not a fan of dreaming the day away – I think it is better to live fully present in each moment we are given. Having said that, I also recognize that some moments just stink. Not in a huge, tragic, horrible way, just in a “wow, I wish I could be done with this” way. And that’s what this moment is like for me. This cold isn’t the worst thing that will happen to me this year. There will be other moments that will be much harder than this one. But right now, I have to admit, I wish I could escape.

And I think the reason is that there is nothing good that comes from a cold. Other difficult moments will have something to teach me. I will think about them and figure out how to deal with them, and eventually I will reflect back on them and understand how they helped formed me into who I am.

But this? This is just feeling crappy with no good to come from it. So,  am dreaming the day away, and I will continue to do so until I am on the mend and can start living my life again.

There endeth the rant!

 

Tomorrow marks the official final day of my time off after Christmas. And as I sit down to blog tonite, it has just hit me how quickly the past several weeks have gone. That probably means I’ve been having a great time – because time always goes quickly when you are having fun – but it also kind of freaks me out.

At the Catalyst conference this past October, our theme was “Be Present.” And we focused on the idea that whatever we were doing, whatever was happening, God had called us to this time and place. It is vital, therefore, that we be present – that we do not allow ourselves to sleepwalk (or speedwalk!) through life. I manage that sometimes. But all of a sudden I find myself stopping on a day like today and thinking – wait a second…where did the time go?

As this time away wraps up and I head back to my normal routine, I just need to take a moment to remind myself to be present. That is all.

I found this image on Pinterest the other day and had to pin it to my board called “Spirit” – which I use to pin anything that moves my spirit. Then, when I’ve had a bad day, I can go back to this board and read/look at some of the things there to give myself a lift.

Today hasn’t been a particularly bad day, but it has been disappointing. With the advent of cold 2.0, my folks’ and I had to cancel some plans with friends tonite. It was a gorgeous and unseasonably warm day – I would have loved to go for a long walk at the waterfront in Belleville. Instead, I spent most of the day inside, just resting and taking care of myself. That’s good in one sense, but man – I hate missing out on opportunities.

All of that to say I’m feeling a little down tonight. So I thought it would be a good idea to look at my Spirit board before bed. What I love about this image/motto is that it is true. You are a miracle. I am a miracle. Against all odds we were born into this world, against all odds we are finding our way through this world. And while that is terribly ‘ordinary’, it is also a miracle.

Whenever someone says that they don’t believe in miracles, I have to grin a little bit. Because what they really mean is not that they don’t believe in miracles. Of course they believe in all the ordinary miracles that take place around us every day – people who fall in love, children who are conceived…what are the lyrics to that Sarah McLachlan song?

The sky knows when it’s time to snow
Don’t need to teach a seed to grow
It’s just another
Ordinary miracle today
— Sarah McLachlan, Ordinary Miracle

Everybody believes in those kind of miracles, we just don’t really recognize them as miracles. Instead, when someone says they don’t believe in miracles they meant they don’t believe in the “big” miracles. Things that go beyond the ordinary. Things that are really hard to explain.

Well, there are probably great intellectual arguments you can make for that point of view. But as for me, my heart tells me that there are ordinary miracles around us every day. And if there are ordinary miracles, I don’t see the extraordinary miracles as that big of a jump.

But then…I believe in the God of the Exodus and of Easter. The God who delights in turning our expectations upside down.

Let me end with this: writing this, thinking about these things, thinking about that God, listening to that Sarah McLachlan song…these things have been good for my spirit, and despite the day’s disappointments, I’m going to bed with a heart that is glowing with warmth and looking forward to what tomorrow will bring. And that, too, is an ordinary miracle.