My Latitudes and Longitudes

A few weeks ago I wrote about dropping anchor in the goodness of God.  This continues to be a reoccurring theme, and a powerful one, in my life.  It's what I am thinking about, despite the mess of this week.  Despite things that are chronic or disappointing or haven't gone away for a long, long time. 



It's been the kind of week where there is rush hour, conversations with car mechanics, bills to pay, meetings to attend, grades to enter, lots of grading that still isn't done, calming students, unexpected conversations.  And maybe even a mild panic attack.  Very unusual in my life.  Very.  It gives me perspective for those people who say this is not unusual at all.

I also witnessed this big thing in every 8th grader's experience with U.S. History....this week they recited the presidents to me in the hallway.  It's intense.  I force myself to stare at the list while they wait and think.  To live in the silence and still smile a little.  To help them along with their method, not my own.  It's a lot to manage for 75 people.  It's a lot of reading people and making space for them.   There are about 15 students left today.  Then we are done.

Breathe in, breathe out.  

God is a Tremendous Author

I know that everyone and their mother is decorating their tree today because of Facebook.  It told me so.   And while I will not put up a picture of my own newly decorated house there, I will write about it here.

Hiaitus officially over. 

Today I welcomed the Christmas season.  Gingerly, because it's a slow and gradual warming I feel towards the hype of December after what is blissfully silent in November.  I took my tree and box of decorations out today and lit my pine scented candle (hello, apartment living) and then inevitably thought about the story of my life while unpacking the ornaments. 

Slate Gray Silence

 In the course of my life, I have always liked Novembers.  I thought of that today as I was driving to school.  This drive, along the river, is always picturesque.  It’s a winding road, and it is beautiful.  Today I saw the trees as they are after the leaves and before the snow, and could suddenly tell that the look of the sunrise had changed.  And then I felt again that it really was about time for November. 

It seems odd to like November so much when we live in a world full of Mays and Augusts and Septembers.  But November is rich like none other.  It feels silent and set apart....before the explosion of festive things in December and the bleak midwinter that follows.  It’s a hibernation, nestled between the brilliance of fall and the intensity of a storms in winter.  Every year in November, I think of Robert Frost poems.  And when I look out the window and see the gray sky, I am not depressed.   Not at all.

Instead, I feel steady again, like the bracing winds can tell me why some things are the way they are.  And I know all of this on the page sounds overly sentimental, because in the end, the sky really is slate gray half of the time.  But I still say it’s a very nice thing.