Clocks with wings, and other silly things...

So, is it really almost December already??? Where has this year gone? I'm sure I am not the first, nor will I be the last, to recite those phrases as we feel the cold creep into our bones, reminding us that Christmas is fast approaching on the road ahead. What?!?! Did I just say "cold creep into our bones"???

Yeah. It's been a cold and unusual year in the weather department. Summer? What Summer?

I have been getting much use out of the down coat that I purchased after our trip to Monterey in October. I'm contemplating gloves this year. I'm also contemplating how it is I've managed to put aside some of the more important things in my life, like reading my Bible and spending time with my Best Friend, Jesus. It's a wonder why He still loves me and asks me to spend time with Him. But He does. He still leaves whimsical paintings in the twilight sky, just after the sun has sunk beneath the waves, using cloud trails and bright orange glows to astound me and give my heart that jump start it needs after a day of frustration, wondering what it is that I am doing with my life.

This was the first year that I actually looked forward to Autumn and Winter. Every year, I start off the Fall season with a disdain in my heart, a melancholy, if you will. A kindred to depression. I feel a loneliness that makes an empty, tinny sound inside. Yes, even the last few years having found the love of my life, there was still that sadness in my drive home, behind a row of red tail lights as the evening dark was approaching.

But this year, I'm not sure why, I was waiting for the time change, waiting for the cold... oh wait... the cold was already here all year. So no need to wait for that. But I wanted to cook, make pies, eat spaghetti squash and flip through my Pampered Chef catalog and dream of spending hours in the kitchen. What? CL has finally become domesticated? Hmmm.. maybe wouldn't go that far. But one thing's for sure, I certainly have been learning more about cooking, and enjoying practicing the art more than years before. Perhaps this is what has contributed a great deal to my looking forward to the seasons changing, and the air getting chill(ier), and the evening glow outside my back window getting replaced by the flourescent reflection of my kitchen's insides.

Maybe that, along with the joy that my husband and I share on a daily basis.

Here is a truth indeed: we don't wait until we're perfect to get married; rather, we become perfected in our relationship with the one we married. Ahh... much like the analogy of the bride.. of Christ.

The church (that's us, strangely, individual, yet collective) does not wait until we "have it all together" before we face Jesus. But rather, it's in the face of Jesus where we become perfected.

I find it funny how married people end up looking alike after so many years of being together. [Much like many dogs tend to look like their owners.. but that's a whole new topic altogether.] Yeah, it's odd, but I'll meet a married couple and think "Wow,.. they could sorta be brother and sister." It's kind of a sick thought if you want to analyze it, but then again not. When you spend so much time with another person, you not only get influenced by their traits and mannerisms, but in doing things similar to them (activities, as well as living in a similar way as they do), you begin to "become" like them. You talk like them, joke like them, make the same stupid, goofy noises, etc. I mean, Jared is already starting to become a little corny like me.... ok.. maybe not.

So, you spend enough time with someone, and you "become" like them.

Is this what is meant when we read in the Bible that we are to become Christ-like; that we are to be perfected by Christ? Well, how does that happen any other way than by spending great amounts of time with that person?

As I write this, I realize I had no intention of waxing spiritual, philosophical, or anything else for that matter. I mean, this blog was intended to share what's going on with "the Lawrences", Christiane AND Jared. But one of the things that has always happened to me is that when I write, that is when my true heart is revealed. There is that jokester side, which often masks the deeper side that longs for the same things that angels long for (but angels cannot attain what is available to us!).

So as I write this, at the beginning of the advent season (advent started on November 28 this year), I realize that the "thing" my heart has been longing for is the same "thing" that it has been longing for all year; the same "thing" that it longs for at the onset of every Autumn season where depression stunts my heart; and the same "thing" that every soul yearns for whether they realize it or not. Only one "thing" can fill the empty loneliness that resides in my heart. That is Emmanuel, God With Us.

O come, O come, Emmanuel
And ransom captive Israel
That mourns in lonely exile here
Until the Son of God appear
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel.

daily sweetness

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daily sweetness