Winter Solstice

As of this week, the light will be ever increasing. Tucked away in the cold of the first day of winter, we find the promise of spring! I'm no pantheist or wiccan - I am a believer in the good news of Jesus Christ, but every year, I celebrate the winter solstice - that shortest, darkest day of the year. It comes on December 21st, day before yesterday. It is the day when my part of the world silently changes from becoming dark earlier and earlier, to dark coming later and later...the sun setting later and later...a few more moments of light each day. I know the science behind it all, but to me it still is such a small miracle.

"And heaven, and heaven and nature sing!"

On the day of winter solstice, I feed the birds. It is a serene, centering ritual I've enjoyed for years. My thoughts linger over the love of a God who is aware of the sparrow. The birds need food in winter, and my soul needs nourishment, too. By His hand we all are fed. I quietly, in my own heart, think of the promise of spring and the faithfulness of a God who said, "While the earth remains, Seedtime and harvest, Cold and heat, Winter and summer, And day and night Shall not cease." (Gen. 8:22)

Winter. The season of light (yes! of light!) and bare, beautiful, sculptural branches. I want to bring these concepts into my home, after Christmas, to decorate a few corners and table tops temporarily. I will add touches of light and bare branches here and there. The ideas are still forming...ways to decorate with light itself, when the Christmas twinkle lights come down. I enjoy a home that celebrates the seasons.

I'll take pictures and blog them for you, once I figure this out and execute it. Any ideas? Please email me with them! I'm sure whatever I come up with, it will be beyond simple to do - because I don't do complicated or ostentatious.

Let us love this winter. We might not get to experience another one. Enjoy this one as though it were your first...or your last. There is no such thing as an ordinary season or an ordinary day.

Christmas With Our College-Career Small Group

Tim and I shared a special moment this evening. Our daughter and future son-in-love hosted the college-career small group that typically meets at our house. Sarah still lives with us at home, since her wedding isn't until March. But her fiancee Jonathan rents a little house in town, and Sarah went over there today to help him get ready for small group. It is the first time I've seen the house since they've moved their new furniture in, and got it all painted and decorated...

...it was like walking into an art gallery. Jonathan's beautiful paintings were everywhere. I have to say - the wall colors were the perfect "foil" for his art. (Good job, Sarah!)

But it was so much more than that. Tonight, Tim and I saw the results of some of our labor, as this group of young people, almost twenty of them, worshipped and shared their hearts. We're going through the Truth Project curriculum, but for tonight, we set it aside in favor of celebrating Christmas together. It was Jonathan and Sarah's very first time hosting any kind of small group, yet it was as though they'd been practicing hospitality together forever. The fireplace...the candles...the food (simple but good)...the way they directed the flow of the evening's activities without being intrusive...

I have to say, it is beyond a pleasure to oversee this small group. The couple who previously were in charge of our college-career group resigned without securing a replacement for themselves this past year, just sort of handing it all back to us. Tim and I gladly took it back over. It was bumpy there for awhile, as we prayed our way through, and added new faces to the mix. This group is absolutely flourishing now - it was languishing before we took it back. I almost feel guilty, as though I am scooping up this massive blessing - sort of like when someone else runs into difficulty and has to sell their home for a loss...if I were the buyer, I might struggle with guilt over capitalizing on such a miraculous deal.

This is how I feel! The previous leaders' loss is Tim's gain and my gain. We love this small group, and they love us. They are totally refreshing, totally real, and completely cool and utterly loveable.

Our future son-in-love Jonathan is facilitating the Truth Project, and is doing an amazing job. After tonight, I can already see that the gift of hospitality has indeed been passed on to the next generation.

Good times...good times.

Come On In!

(the wreath I made...I'm so proud!)

Some of you have emailed me and "Facebooked" me, wanting to see a few more pictures of our home. (Thank you for all the sweet notes, by the way!)

So come on in, I have the best hot drink ready for you - here's the recipe:

a 46 oz. bottle of pineapple juice
a can of jelled cranberry sauce
cloves
cinnamon sticks

Put the jelled cranberries in a blender and hit them a few times, just to "liquify" them. This will make it easier on you. Then pour it into a 2 quart saucepan on the stove, with the whole bottle of pineapple juice in it. Stir it all in, and steep it with the cloves and cinnamon. Strain before serving. So good!


Come for a tour around our tiny "Ceiligh Cottage"

The fireplace in my bedroom - and where Bocelli and Grant live.

This kitchen sees a lot of action - a busy, busy place.
The diningroom...



A wreath on each bedroom door...

My bedroom - red berry swags and kissing ball are up. We're all ready for Christmas!

Well, we are "T minus 7 days and counting". Rain is turning to snow where I am - hope your evening is well spent, my friends. Enjoy this time of the year...

It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas!

Batten down the hatches, east Tennessee, we are fixin' to get us some weather! How do I know? Without the forecast, I can tell.



Did you know that juncos feed voraciously when there is snow coming? They do. Juncos are little dark, charcoal grey birds, with light bellies and light beaks. My back yard is full of them this afternoon. I tried to take pictures, but you can't see these dark birds amongst all the fallen leaves - but I did happen to snatch a picture of a little guy who flew to my fence ~

Can you see him, there in the upper right hand corner? He is one of about a dozen that have been feeding in my yard today - juncos are ground feeders, and these guys are preparing for something...they are scarfing up every last bit of seed that falls from the feeders above.
I say "Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow." I'm ready. The pantry is stocked, my shopping is done, I even have only one gift left to wrap....no, two. But that's it. Cookies are made, and I have all I need to make more. Twinkle lights are on, music is playing, that steady sound of rain on the roof, and here I am, warm and dry with sounds of spring, as the canary and pocket parrot compete as to who can sing the loudest. Along with all of Knoxville, I raided the grocery store for milk and bread...and I have a small stack of Christmas movies to watch. And a stash of great magazines to peruse. And a husband to snuggle, once he finally makes it home. I also have a message to prepare for Sunday, but that is supposed to be a surprise.
::she says, smiling::
The juncos are telling me that all this rain is about to change to snow. Let's see if they are right.

Christmas Dreams

I found this piece of paper the other day, and it brought back my own memories - of practicing writing what would soon be my "new name" over and over and over. My Sarah Atchley will soon be Sarah Howe.

Last Christmas, it was Hannah who was engaged to be married. One year later, it is Sarah who will be leaving us very soon - engaged to be married in March. We have no more daughters to give away after this.

It lends a sweet urgency to Christmastime for me. Again (like last year) I've decorated a little earlier than usual. Again, in sudden unexpected moments, the poignancy overwhelms my heart. Next Christmas, there will be no daughters asleep in their beds in this house on Christmas morning.

But it is good....so good. Because these two new sons of mine are so good, so Godly, so fit to love and lead my daughters.

I've dreamed of all this, in Christmases past. I would hear some of the sweet, romantic holiday songs, like "What Are You Doing New Year's Eve", and "Baby, It's Cold Outside", and I would hold my Tim's hand, we'd sing together, kiss each other, and I knew with all my heart that I wanted this for my daughters. I wanted them to be loved and wanted by a man who was handsome and accomplished and strong in the Lord. I wanted them to share kisses by twinklelight with the one Someone Special...back then, years and years ago, it all seemed so remote and far away. I wondered who my "other sons" would be.

Tonight, I know. I know. Amazing!! What was once a misty, dream-like mystery to me twenty years ago...ten years ago...two years ago...has now materialized. My dreams for my daughters have come true. There is someone wonderful and Godly to sing a line or two of "Baby It's Cold Outside" to my gorgeous girls, and each couple is now making the sorts of Christmas memories that only lovers, and future lovers, can make.

This is my Christmas gift ~ two new sons, strong and good, who love my daughters selflessly. The way my daughters' mother has been loved.

Spurgeon Preached It Too...

“God looked on Christ as if Christ had been sin; not as if He had taken up the sins of His people, or as if they were laid on Him, though that were true, but as if He Himself had positively been that noxious—that God-hating—that soul-damning thing, called sin. When the Judge of all the earth said, ‘Where is Sin?’ Christ presented himself…what a grim picture that is, to conceive of sin gathered up into one mass - murder, lust and stealing, and adultery - and the Father looked on Christ as if He were that mass of sin. He was not sin, but the Father looked on upon Him as made sin for us. Christ stands in our place, assumes our guilt, takes on our iniquity and God treats Him as if He had been sin…How can any punishment fall on that man who ceases to possess sin, because his sin was cast upon Christ and Christ has suffered in his place? Oh, glorious triumph of faith to be able to say, whenever I feel the guilt of sin, whenever conscience pricks me, ‘Yes, it is true but my Lord is answerable for it all, for He has taken it all upon Himself and suffered in my place.”
Charles Spurgeon, The King’s Highway

5 Ways to Enjoy the Simplicity of the Season

Typically the holidays bug me. The crude commercialization. The old Christmas carols, ruined by pretty-boy bands. The extra work combined with the shortened energy levels that come with less daylight. I have, every year, always found ways to love Christmas, so I'm not a "bah-humbug" in any strict sense of the word.

But this year, so far, I've not encountered the slightest negativity inside. After a great deal of amazed pondering, I offer you a few thoughts - humble, not at all earth-shaking, and maybe not even blog-worthy, but nevertheless...

1. Celebrate your way. In recent years, I had begun allowing "others" to dictate the season to me (and much of my time all year 'round, in fact), in the sense that if they invited me over, I felt obligated to accept for various reasons - to help them through a time of transition, to cheer them up, to just have fun, to assist in this or that, to prevent them from having to be alone. This translated into me always "going", and cutting back on what I love - which is having people in my home, spending time with my family. Over months and even years, I didn't realize how this was suffocating me. Out of love, out of an honorable motive, I was allowing myself to be squeezed and molded into someone else's idea of what makes for fellowship. This Christmas, I have spent it exactly how I want to spend it...in my own home, for heaven's sake! Filling my home with people and things and activities I love. No apologies. I've had a stern talk with myself. I said, "Self, never again will you take what makes your own heart sing, and put it on a shelf in a misguided effort to help someone else's heart sing. They must find their own song, and they must learn to sing it."

2. Get outside. "....and heaven and nature sing..." remember the old carol? Creation is God's means of soothing the human heart. Don't let the cold weather prevent you from getting outside, filling your bird feeders, taking a walk, surveying your winter landscape....just breathing in the chill air, appreciating the change in season. Embrace it.

3. Make something. Pick just one or three projects you've always wanted to try (but never had time, because you were too busy being somewhere else all the time) and block out an afternoon or two and just do it. Arts and crafts are vastly underrated for their therapeutic benefits. So far this season, I've made a real-green wreath, all sorts of evergreen arrangements, cookies and cakes, cloved some oranges, and I am going to cut out a bunch of paper snowflakes, and hang them from little bare branches, as a winter arrangement I'll keep in my house until March.

4. Read what inspires you. Self explanatory.

5. Selah. (in Hebrew, it means "pause and deeply consider"). Selah over what God is saying to your heart this season. Mull over the good news of grace. Ponder "peace on earth, and goodwill to men". Your God is in a good mood, friends, His anger was completely spent at the cross. Christ took the penalty and punishment for you, and for your children. This is crazy-good news. Reason to rejoice. Those swaddling clothes wrapped the baby Christ, He submitted to them, and then they were removed once and for all in the tomb, as the Risen Christ came out of it victorious...for you.

Trust me, this gets dangerous when you begin to take the truth of it and apply it personally. Everyone is comfortable with the doctrine of grace, so long as it stays on the pages of the Bible, where it can't mess with their actual beliefs, where it can't challenge their self sufficiency.

But Christ is all about incarnation. Those who preach the gospel must be incarnational about the truth of it. Let it invade.

These thoughts have totally transformed my experience of Advent this year. Oh, my soul waits for Him, and in His word I do hope!