a gift

this week our small group was meeting for the first time in about 6 weeks. busy lives and the challenge of getting 8 calendars to match with an unscheduled friday night led us to a drought of get-togethers. so on monday i decided that instead of our usual pot luck style dinner, i wanted to cook the whole meal, a harvest feast, as a gift. i had all the recipes that i wanted to try. and i wanted everyone to just come and receive. using the good china, creating a beautiful centerpiece, lots of candles, and some of my favorite people at our table...it just sounded like a perfect idea.

and then the week began. and what felt like a gift on monday turned into a burden.

how does that happen, that the challenge, the difficulty of carrying out the plan, completely overshadows and swallows up the joy that set the whole thing in motion? as soon as i recognized the shifting in my heart i decided to fight back. to stand firm in the joy of giving the gift instead of collapsing into the earthquake of toil and hassle.

and there was some hassle. like my carrot cake mysteriously exploding in my oven. that was a huge mess. and an enormous inconvenience. but with a little perspective and gratefully having all the ingredients to make another one, i was able to chuckle about it. not a martha stewart moment. more like seinfeld which i actually like better anyway.

the dinner was wonderful. just like i hoped. fantastic food, wonderful friends, authentic and vulnerable conversation, beauty all around, a glorious harvest feast.

busy, busy

i am slammed today, stuff back to back to back. and that's great. it makes me appreciate and depend on the power of the Holy Spirit and recognize how God surprises me with beauty to encourage me in the hard places of life.

like this glorious bush which reminded me of the burning bush. beautiful!

hope your day is full of His power and beauty too.

grateful...

for a God who sees the orphan and for those love them. remembering last year in africa explaining halloween and trick or treating to precious orphans.

me: kids dress in costumes and go to the doors of their neighbors and say "trick or treat" and they get candy.

them: for nothing?

me: right. just for being cute kids in costumes.

them: one piece?

me: sometimes more. and then they go to the next house and do it again.

them: how much candy do they get?

me: ummm, alot.

them: wow.

wishing i was there to give them not just candy but love.

hooray for mondays #2

seriously lame title. not feeling so hooray this morning. but i do have the next of my 3 music faves to tell you about.

jj heller. i listened to her cd painted red repeatedly a year ago while in africa. it was a beautiful soundtrack to an amazing trip. she has a rich, full voice and her song lyrics are thick with meaning. love it.

and now she has a new cd! hooray!

available on itunes.

hooray for mondays!

ok not really. but hooray for great music! i have 3 great artists to tell you about. here's #1:

jason gray

everything sad is coming untrue

fabulous! you will love it.

love the prodigal and the golden boy

available on itunes or jasongraymusic.com

and you're welcome. more to come....

seasons of travel

in life, just like in nature, there are seasons. right now it is fall, although the weather in colorado has been a little summerish. and at the morrison's we are in travel season. for 6 weekends in a row, either david or i will be gone. this creates great upset in the home ecosystem as evidenced by 2 things in david's absence:

1. light bulbs burn out. hard to reach ones. light bulbs that you didn't even know existed. applies to appliances and cars also.

2. dogs go on high alert which creates alot of gastrointestinal disturbances. ie: farting, barfing and generally being skittish and barky.

they might look relaxed but trust me. they could heave at any moment.

when david is gone i catch up on tv watching that he is uninterested in (project runway, weird indie movies), stay up even later than usual reading, and get lots of sewing done. all good.

but not as good as having him home. looking on the bright side, at least i don't barf.

beauty

a summer sunset in colorado...just driving to the grocery store and the beauty of the Creator painting the sky was astounding. i had to quickly pull over and try to capture the beauty with my phone. why? why does beauty, even in the daily occurrences of life still overtake our hearts?

i think c.s. lewis describes it well:

"We do not want merely to see beauty, though, God knows, even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words — to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it."

we want Him. He is lavish in His beauty and in His love.