Relief

Water pours down cycling between heavy and heavier.  

Will it soak into packed earth? 

The sound is deafening at times: rain on tin, rain on wood, rain on rain on rain. There are rooms that can't bear conversation.

Pressure falls in tandem with the water.

It is beautiful and longed for.

One Thousand Gifts

God gives only gifts. 

Everything is a gift. 

The gift in everything is the potential for a closer relationship with Him.

462. Claps at the gate.

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463. Tortillas with ranch dressing.

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464. Band-aids and adhesive tape.

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465. Being able to arrange delivery all by ourselves.

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466. A bedroom turned into a quiet retreat.

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467. Sophisticated mistakes.

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468. Learning patience.

This is a running list of my One Thousand Gifts. If you want to see the complete list you can click on the 1000 Gifts button in the left side-bar or click this link to open a single document with the entire list.

A Holy Experience - One Thousand Gifts Community

Choosing to Step Out of Default

What will I choose?


Will I choose to be content when

• the daytime temperature hovers between 28 and 33 degrees Celsius and the only summer skirt I own gets caught in the door and tears and I don't know where to buy sewing supplies?
• my bedroom is also a storage space?
• the things we use daily don't have 'homes' and make a visual clutter that is oh, so distracting to the mind?
• I can't find the kinds of things I'm used to cooking with - like tomato sauce and sour cream?
• the dogs in the neighbourhood bark so incessantly that I can't sleep during the night?
• my efforts at learning Spanish are making such slow progress?

None of these things are big. None of them are life-threatening. But each do threaten to destroy my contentment and peace.  I know that none of them compare even closely to the apostle Paul's challenges when he writes in Philippians:  "I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances."  (Philippians 4:11)

So I have a choice to make:  Get bogged down by inconveniences or

• be glad that I have a sister who could mail me a patch for my skirt
• thank God for all the good things we have in our home and the way He arranged for us to be in it
• be thankful for the living that happens in our home every day
• appreciate the adventure of new foods and flavours
• use awake-at-night moments (or hours) as time to talk to my Father
• remember how far my ability to communicate has come and for the fact that my mistakes are at least getting more sophisticated

Each day is filled with these choices. And they are decisions that have to be made consciously or they won't be made at all, and, sadly, the default mode is 'discontentment'.

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(I think it's time for me to get back to regular posting of the Thousand Gifts list. It's too easy to let the habit/discipline of thankfulness slide, to forget to look through the eyes of thanks.  So, regardless of how many gifts I've listed privately in my own writing in the past months, I'm going to pick up my list on PeaceLedge carrying on from the last number recorded here.)

While living in the North I enjoyed the blessing of close friends who participated in a regular Bible study and prayer time with me.  Our weekly meetings were filled with deep conversation, vulnerability, laughter, and tears, always drawing me back to the Word, deeper into the Breather of the Word.

At times we would be more sporadic in our meeting times, five women juggling families, vocations, ministry. But always we would come back together, realizing the life-giving quality of spiritual fellowship.

Maybe I relied on them too much and not enough on the Giver of Life.

Here, in this new Southern home, I don't have that same community, that tight-knit tapestry of interwoven lives. So who do I go to when I'm in need of encouragement, a listening ear, an embrace, accountability?

I cried those questions to the One Who Answers, and His gentle, loving voice replied: "Who indeed? Am I not enough?  Am I not All-in-All?"

He is.

And so I learn to lean on Him, and not on the people-gifts He gives me. It's better this way.

*Just a couple of photos from around where we live - I've been amazed at the clouds here and wanted to share them.*

Pines and Cones

We are living in a different land now, and so much is new that sometimes it's hard to know where to start with the discovering.

So we're starting with whatever comes up whenever it comes up, and we'll see where that leads us.

When we first arrived in South America we were immediately aware of the importance of the pine cone in daily life.  First of all, pine cones were everywhere.  The most obvious ones lay on the roads and in the yards. But then we also saw bags of them for sale at the neighbourhood supermarkets and gas stations. And at the firewood sale-lots. Quickly we learned that, in a country where homes don't have central heat, fires play a key role in staying warm in winter, and pine cones themselves are the items used as kindling!

Brown Eyed Boy gathering pine cones for our family

Seeing how key they were going to be to our life here, when I saw an Outdoor Hour Challenge on pine cones on the Handbook of Nature Study blog, I thought it might be interesting to take a closer look.


I read the background information on pines and pine cones in Anna Botsford Comstock's book, Handbook of Nature Study, and gathered the family. Even My Dear Man came along on this one!  We walked three blocks to the woods that have become a shortcut for us when we go visit friends, for we knew that there we would find an abundance of pines.  I asked each person to gather one open and one closed cone as well as a bundle of needles.

Did you know that the topmost branch of a pine, the one that points straight up, is called the 'leader'? And did you know that the new branches form below the leader, in clusters of 3 or more, depending on the variety? That in itself didn't intrigue the children too much, but then I asked them to look for trees that had more than one leader, either two or three.  When a certain insect lays its eggs at the top of the tree, in a little hole it has burrowed, the developing and hatching process kills the leader branch. But to compensate, the tree establishes a new leader from the new-growing branches at the top. Usually only one steps into the role, giving a new, off-centre leader, but occasionally two (and sometimes even three) will share the role. 

After hearing that information, the children and I began seeing trees with lopsided or multiple leaders! This forest was filled with trees that gave evidence of a storied past!


The pine cones we took home, sketched in our nature journals, and then each child and I narrated about the walk and the cones.  I was very pleased with the resulting drawings, especially since it has been many weeks since we've brought out our nature journals.