Wednesday, October 7, 2015

*sigh*

I love fall.  The mornings I get up and run, the cool sting on my cheeks & the smell of woodsmoke hanging in the air...bliss!   As my leg muscles burn thoughts of my hot cup of (decaf) coffee waiting on me to brew dances through my thoughts making me want to keep pushing, keep striving up that last hill towards home.  The long hot days are (mostly) behind us now, there are pumpkins and baked goodies and turkeys to look forward to.  Races to run, walks to revel in, and leaf piles to jump in.  There are cups of hot chocolate to sip, blankets to snuggle down into, and books to get lost in.  There are friends and family to spend time with and words to weave into stories.

My kiddos and I are on book two of the Indian in the Cupboard trilogy, I am rereading the Harry Potter series (although my FIL gave me a new series to try, so I am looking forward to that), we are getting ready to begin a new history read aloud called Augustus Caesar's World by G. Foster, we are doing American History Fridays (seriously excited to get to read aloud so on Fridays....Jean Fritz, Laura Ingalls Wilder, American Girl series, Carry on Mr. Bowditch, Caddie Woodlawn...more than I can name here).  We are almost done with the unit of fractions my oldest and I delved long and deep into (carried over from last spring), and adding to our wall timeline we have made out of index cards, colored pens, and sticky tack stuff.  My kids are not as excited about the language arts portion (I love language arts) and reluctant to get started in Science so we are searching for ways to make both more palatable.

Service dog advanced training is still going on for my middle child, it has been an amazing experience and enriched her life in ways we didn't anticipate, brought joy to the whole family, and required lots and lots of hard work.  In short it has been awesome.

I write about all the good and joy filled because that's what I want to remember.  But in the interest of being honest, the good are moments tucked into very, very hard days.  There have been several days filled with dr appointments, tears, and thick with frustrated disappointments.  It's hard to read the news headlines, hard to remember God is here some days, hard to read about others losses and struggles with cancer and chronic illness and chronic pain.  It is shamefully easy for me to fall away from His Word because I let the busyness of the moment distract me.  Each day feels like a battle for joy and for hope, not because our days are so terrible (I know it could be worse, they have been worse, and I see and hear others struggling with so much more), but they are hard and I become hard hearted, forgetting to see the beauty in the mundane and the holiness of hard.   So here is to a fall that will be beautiful only because, and only when I see His presence in each moment.  Here is to a fall spent praying for others that are hurting, to reaching out and blessing someone unexpectedly, and for thanking God for every single moment, especially the hard ones.