300 days of beauty

The snow is gently falling outside my window, adding inches of fluffy powder on top of inches of hard-packed snow and ice that will most likely not melt for months. In spite of the likelihood of biting it later when I go outside, it is quite beautiful. 

I'm kicking it old-school today. Cleaning my room while listening to FM radio. The station is playing "classic hits" which make me feel happy and nostalgic and old all at the same time. 

(Funny story: In Tennessee this fall, we were settling in to our townhouse. D and Cece came out of their rooms excitedly talking about their clocks that "you can turn the dial and find all sorts of music that will just play!" Yes, it was just a clock radio. And yes, we do listen to the radio in the car, but even that scans, no dial. In their techie world of CDs, mp3s, and Amazon Prime, this was new and exciting. They enjoyed synchronizing their stations. I was amused and also marveled at how they make me feel old by not even trying. It's just going to get worse...) 

Anyway...

This week was challenging. At times, my eyes that see beauty at every turn can also be so blurred by tears, that the world seems a tragic and hopeless place. Life seems more like a ticking time-bomb than brimming with unlimited joy and possibility. I start to focus horizontally on everything around me, scroll through facebook feeds, click on one too many news stories, and I'm floundering.

So I'm aiming vertical. Looking up to my Lord who sees all. My God who sees every tear I've cried and is near. I want to keep engaging with Him, keep talking, let him be the confidante that I hold most dear.

I feel very strongly that beauty can be found in each day. For me I'm striving to post 300 days of beauty. Pictures I've snapped that are beauty in my life.

Why 300? I'm realistic. I never do all that I want to do and that gives me 66 days (Leap Year!) of flexibility.

Day 1: We often went this park on the river in Knoxville. It is a special place for all of us and I took many many pictures. I love this picture. D could spend hours catching falling leaves from the monstrous Tennessee trees. It was a delightful game for him and I loved to watch him. He may be nearing 13, but simple pleasures still delight.

Looking toward beauty, looking back with thankfulness

New Year's Eve marks an important anniversary for me. For my heart it represents a line in the sand. I stepped forward into the year 2004 feeling the gift of time that had been given to me.  I've gathered two blog posts that I wrote on New Year's Eve 2008 and 2013, five and ten years past my New Year's Eve of 2003.

December 31, 2008
 
Five years ago I was 25 with a three-month-old son and I was told that the I mole I had removed was melanoma. It changed my life forever. Today, New Year's Eve, is the five year anniversary of when I had my surgery--a sentinel node biopsy plus removing the area around the mole to see if the melanoma had spread. Every year since then, I start each year with profound thankfulness. Five years feels even better. 

Medically speaking, two years and five years are milestones for cancer survivors. I am thankful to pass those markers, but I also know that God is the ultimate holder of my statistics, each of my days here on earth have been numbered long before I was born.

I often ponder how different my life is now because of my cancer experience. When I had my five-year check-up two weeks ago, the doctor left the room, and I just started crying. I left the building, got in my car, and started bawling. Tears of joy. The happiest tears I had cried in a very long time. So thankful to be given another day, another year.

What have I cried out to God the most in the last five years since God preserved my life? To be able to stay home and raise my kids. To raise kids who love the Lord. At that time I only had one son. My family talked about what he would be like next Christmas at one-year-old, and I smiled outwardly, but inwardly wondered if I would be around next Christmas. 

Now, we have three amazing children. After our son, we adopted two beautiful daughters--every day they amaze me. I have been given such a great privilege to stay home with them, teach them, play with them, love them, learn from them, and be amazed at what God is doing in our family.

God allowed me to see what really mattered--I think my contentment in being a stay-at-home mom is largely because I faced the possibility of not being around at all. My life is rich. This New Year's Eve, I'm home celebrating with a cheese fondue dinner, no-bake cookies, snuggling with our three-month-old, smiling daughter, chatting with my son, listening to giggles from our three-year-old daughter, and watching a movie with my wonderful husband. This is the only place I'd want to be.

There is so much I could say about this, but I'll end with the first verse I read after finding out that I had melanoma: "Don't be afraid," he said, "for you are deeply loved by God. Be at peace; take heart and be strong!" Daniel 10:19 NLT

December 31, 2013

When my son was a baby and I would take him to the grocery store with me, gray-haired patrons would OFTEN stop me to ooh and awe over him, and then (without fail) remind me to cherish these years because they end in a flash. So very true. I hope I have honored their sage advice spoken from their life experience.

On this day, 10 years ago, I was scared to death. Early in the morning, leaving my 3-month-old son with my parents, my husband and I headed to the hospital for my surgery. Several weeks before, I had been informed that a mole that had been removed was melanoma. Since I had been pregnant when it developed, they didn't know how fast it had spread. The surgeon was removing a large chunk of area around where the mole had been as well as removing lymph nodes to check if the cancer had spread from its original site. I've journaled, blogged, and reflected about this time in my life each New Year's Eve for the last 10 years. 

Many events change a life, but this one was a doozy. And really, I wouldn't change it. I saw God's hand and felt His presence through it. It has directed the course I have taken as a wife and mom probably more than any other factor. That's not to say that I didn't battle tremendously with the fear, hurt, and anger at facing this at 25 years of age, but I see how He's used it in my life. He was and is faithful.

So today, I am thankful. I have been gifted TIME. Time to be a wife and a mom, time to be a sister, daughter, granddaughter, cousin, niece, aunt, and a friend. I don't feel like I always use my time the best, I feel unworthy and inadequate often, but always there is a thankfulness for being able to be here. The journey is not easy, but worth it. Ten years later I can say that I have continued to engage with the Lord. I may cry, question, yell, fear, doubt, and hurt at life sometimes, but I walk with Him. Not because I'm so great, but because He is. My heart's desire is to continue with Him--walking, running, leaping, limping, skipping, crawling, piggy-backing, or being cradled...whatever it takes.

The old hymn "In Christ Alone" has popped into my head. I love the whole song, but will highlight the beginning and the end...

"In Christ alone my hope is found
He is my light, my strength, my song
This Cornerstone, this solid ground
Firm through the fiercest drought and storm

What heights of love, what depths of peace
When fears are stilled, when strivings cease
My Comforter, my All in All
Here in the love of Christ I stand

...From life's first cry to final breath
Jesus commands my destiny

No power of hell, no scheme of man
Can ever pluck me from His hand
Til He returns or calls me home
Here in the power of Christ I'll stand"

wet, bedraggled, and laughing on the Grayson Highlands in Virginia

December 31, 2015

Today is a spectacularly normal day. Bright blue skies and frigid air and temps. I will have three to four cups of coffee. I will go for a run. I will probably clean my house, I will listen to my kids chatter and play and argue and sing (Belle is currently singing a Latin Christmas song while playing by the Christmas tree), I will soak it up because it is all so beautiful. We will spend time with friends tonight and then return home to ring in the New Year. My husband will not tell me to go to bed because it is the one night a year I am entitled to stay up as late as I want. Can you tell we disagree on this sometimes?? He loves me anyway. 

My theme for the year has seemed to center around the "beautiful mess" that is life. There is nothing pristine about the days I walk in, but I'll take them, every single one of them. 

I believe to the core of who I am that joy and beauty can be found wherever you find yourself this New Year's Eve. That does not mean life is perfect, that does not mean that hardship and tragedy can or should be glossed over in a fake sort of happiness that is neither genuine nor realistic. It's just that God is good, He is active and moving, He has purpose, gives beauty and joy, and radiates love and grace into this shambled world. He has never wasted anything that I've walked through, He has been faithful and patient and loving and present through more yuck than I can say. To journey through this life with my Lord is worth it and there is no other way to do it.

May you all have a, joy-filled, beauty-infused New Year's Eve and start to the New Year!

 ...and a few shots from our Isle of Palms beach weekend...it's always a good day on the beach

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My husband and two friends have an annual New Year's Eve snowshoeing expedition that they take each year. I call it the Arctic Expedition. They had a blast this year and as usual it was very cold and very windy. Nothing has quite compared to 2013, so I pulled the blog post from that expedition below, just for fun.

Arctic Expedition, December 31, 2013

Now onto the snowshoeing excursion which was more like an Antarctic expedition simulator. 

Here's the estimated data: 

• a hike to Lake of Glass which sits at timberline (between 11,000 and 12,000 feet above sea level)

• 8 miles round trip
• pelting snow

• 13 degrees with negative 8 windchill

• 50-100 mph gusts of wind

• some gusts being more constant than gusty

With these three guys that equals FUN. More or less anyway. Shaun said at one point he physically couldn't move his leg forward because of the wind's force. Mark lost a glove that was whipped off his person to unknown parts. With the wind at their back, they could practically fly :-). Jeff shot some video because the pictures couldn't quite capture the intensity. None of them had ever experienced such wind and they would be what you would call "outdoorsy" guys. Anyway, they had a blast, with much shared laughter and a growler of Coop's beer to drink at the top. It was epic (the wives will laugh at the stories, while shaking our heads in consternation).

After surviving Antarctica, the guys drove through the flood-ravaged valley and town of Glen Haven. The roads have been rebuilt, but many of these new roads are temporarily dirt. The dirt roads show where the floods completely demolished the previously paved highway. The devastation is unbelievable. 

As they rounded a curve, the tires hit ice sending the car into a slow spin. The momentum of the spin seemed too great to even think they would stop before the front tire dropped over the edge, sending them rolling into the river below. In the moment they each were rapidly calculating how they were going to get out of the car once they rolled. But then the car stopped...less than a foot from hitting the edge. Like an angel stuck a wedge under the tire, no joke. 

Praise the Lord for His protection!

I picked a different new year

Am I the only one who gets overwhelmed on January 1st? I have a giddy anticipation mixed with a heaping dose of dread. The unknown is scary and exciting all at the same time. Hope and idealism splash around in my mind but I know my overly optimistic tendencies. Status quo realism is likely to have taken over by the month’s end.

Maybe we shouldn’t make resolutions on January 1^st. (Obviously, I didn't.) Frankly, December burns me out and runs me over. I love it, try to savor it, but it is exhausting. This year I tried to keep the season simple, but simple in December is still not simple. We marathon through never ending to-do lists, errands, shopping, baking, cooking, cleaning, and wrapping (shall I keep going?). Add a few Christmas parties, multiple practices and kids’ (adorable) performances, and a cookie exchange for good measure and my sense of normalcy resembles more closely the wrapping paper shards left in the wake of my six-year-old unwrapping presents. And suddenly, January enters, heralding an aromatic scent of “blah” and I want to discuss new “to-do” anythings as much as I want a root canal. I’ve barely reinstated normal and am 99% likely to still have Christmas decorations up.

So although my husband and I have thought through our vision and dreams for this year (well, it is tradition after all…), in January, I marked the Chinese New Year on my calendar. And just like that,  February 19th has nearly arrived! Hoorah! I feel recovered from December and I'm looking for a shake-up (in homeschool land, February is considered akin to evil so I secretly hoped to be making resolutions from a sandy beach, but alas, maybe next year!)

I've kept it simple: