Daybook

Out my Window:  Frosty ground, crows cawing, sun shining, last remnant of my sunflowers

Enjoying: flowers still blooming to cut and share, baking, beautiful early fall weather, sun, apple weather candle burning each evening, twinkle lights on at night

Listening to/Watching: I listened to the Holy Post Podcast.   https://www.holypost.com/holy-post-podcast  This week is worth humbly listening and learning. The author of The Color of Compromise was the interview. https://www.holypost.com/holy-post-podcast/episode/2612add6/episode-422-the-churchs-complicity-in-racism-with-jemar-tisby Listening to the second book in the Lord of the Rings Trilogy: The Twin Towers. https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Two-Towers-Audiobook/B009ABHTF4?qid=1598033985&sr=1-1&ref=a_search_c3_lProduct_1_1&pf_rd_p=e81b7c27-6880-467a-b5a7-13cef5d729fe&pf_rd_r=6KR21Q0934XX42SAEX7K So much wisdom and encouragement in this epic tale.

Reading: By my bedside: The Pursuit of the Holy: A Divine Invitation by Simon Ponsonby. Still reading Jen Pollock Michel’s book Surprised by Paradox: The Promise of And in an Either-Or World. Seems like the last two weeks many authors and bloggers have been talking about this paradox. Sacred echoes.

I was excited to see that Shelly Miller has a new book coming out October 13, Searching for Certainty: Finding God in the Disruptions of Life. I was thankful to get on her book launch team. Shelly’s writing is full of beauty and real life. I can’t wait for the physical copy, but I am thankful for the timing of getting to read the advanced e-book. The tag line of the book was enough to draw me in.

After a long year of slowly reading, I finished Holiness: Its Nature, Hinderances, Difficulties and Roots by JC Ryle. It is a book I will need to re-read again. It is full of papers and sermons by Ryle on Holiness.

My chief desire in all my writings, is to exalt the Lord Jesus Christ and make Him beautiful and glorious in the eyes of people; and to promote the increase of repentance, faith, and holiness upon earth.

Book Study with my Ladies’ Small Groups: The Good Life: What Jesus Teaches about Finding True Happiness by Derwin Gray. It is a study on the Beatitudes.

Rambling Thoughts: Today was a funeral of an unexpected death, cancer diagnosis and two months later he is home in glory and his wife adopts the new title of widow. While at the funeral we heard a siren go by and later found out of an even more unexpected death, a young friend of the church died in a fire. So now my thoughts are death and grief, joys and sorrows…processing the numbering of my days, but also remembering to number the days with others too. Thinking of Wendell Berry’s character, Jayber Crow’s words on death,

I whisper over to myself the way of loss, the names of the dead. One by one, we lose our loved ones, our friends, our powers of work and pleasure, our landmarks, the days of our allotted time. One by one, the way we lose them, they return to us and are treasured up in our hearts. Grief affirms, them, preserves them, sets the cost. Finally a man stands up alone, scoured and charred like a burnt tree, having lost everything and (at the cost only of its loss) found everything, and is ready to go. Now I am ready.

As I meander down the Wendell Berry trail I am reminded of his poem, The Peace of Wild Things and find comfort in this beautiful day and remember that God is still good and still on His throne. He is in the process of making all things new, and all will be set right.

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Fitness and Mental Health:  Walking and/or Pilates almost every day. Jumped into a 5 day Pilates Challenge with the Balanced Life https://thebalancedlifeonline.com/ I am thinking of joining the group for a couple months. Pilates seem to be useful for my body and mind. I love that Robin Long keeps saying, “Trust the process.” It feels to simple in some ways, but I know that it is strengthen my body. The gentleness of it seems right for this season. Mental Health: Exercise is key and continuing to look for beauty. Writing the date and day and a brief list of the events of day has been very helpful for my mental health. Numbering my days…

Home: Mostly keeping up with the basics. Cutting flowers and lighting candles, turning on the twinkle lights are all ways I am adding beauty to our home and my soul in the middle of a very full season.

Giving Thanks For: time away, beautiful fall days, my home, provisions, rest, laughter, vegetables and flowers growing in my gardens, walks and hikes, so much beauty in this world, praying friends, serving with a friends, Census job, good books, challenging thoughts, community, feeling connected and loved

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