All shall be well.

I have hesitated these past weeks in posting a new blog because 1) we have been traveling like gypsies and 2) every time I sit down to write something I feel so unprepared. Maybe that's just years of outlines-before-essays talking, but in any case today I just decided to bite the bullet. This will probably just be a precursor to many blogettes about this topic, but so be it! I don't think we as believers can meditate on the fact that "all shall be well" enough.

I'm reading Anya Seton's Katherine. Again. (I have the singularly odd habit, so my husband tells me, of reading books that I enjoy over and over again. Scandalous.) It is an incredible story of history and struggle and redemption that includes a beautiful revelation of God's love at the close that surprises me, surprisingly, each time I read it. It is from this book that the fantastic doctrine of "all shall be well" has been brought to my attention again. Seton uses the nonfictional character of Julian of Norwich as one of the influential spiritual teachers of Katherine Swynford. She quotes Julian's writings verbatim, and while I haven't read her stuff personally or done any research on the validity of her faith (though there are people I know and respect who have read and admire her), it seems to me that most of what she says is right on. Here are some of my most cherished snippets from Seton and/or Julian:

"'It is truth that sin is cause of all this pain; sin is behovable--none the less all shall be well, and all shall be well, you shall see yourself that all manner of thing shall be well.'"

"'I am the ground of thy beseeching.... I am sure that no man asks mercy and grace with true meaning, but if mercy and grace have been first given to him.'"**

"My darling, I am glad thou art come to me: in all thy woe I have ever been with thee; now seest thou my loving."

"It is I, I that thou lovest, that thou enjoyest, that thou servest. It is I that thou longest for, it is I that is all."*

"What a weary time it took to learn how homely and direct the answer was, that it needed no thunderbolts and flaming wonders for Him to fulfill His promise, I will keep thee full securely. That He had as many ways of loving as there were droplets in the ocean, the ocean that was yet all one sea."

I won't pretend I didn't scratch my head at some of those, but once I sort of got them, I just thought, "Yeah."

*Every time I read this quote it reminds me of the end of The Last Battle, when Aslan speaks to Emeth, the young and noble Calormene, and tells him that all his courageous acts and kept promises and honorable deeds that he did in the name of Tash, he in fact did for Aslan. For, as Aslan says, "I and he are of such different kinds that no service which is vile can be done to me, and none which is not vile can be done to him." And though Emeth had been seeking Tash all his life, "unless [his] desire had been for [Aslan] [he] wouldst not have sought so long and so truly. For all find what they truly seek."

**My Bible study indirectly talked about this last night. We are currently studying how marriage, specifically the historical Jewish tradition, parallels the relationship of Christ to the Church. We discussed "prevenient grace" for a while--the truth that God must first choose to extend grace to you in order for you to choose Him (John 15:16). This is quite like a marriage proposal. A woman doesn't walk up to a random guy, tap him on the shoulder and say, "Thanks, but I don't want to marry you." In order for a woman to have that decision, she must first be asked! We all had mini-epiphanies, so I thought I'd share.

Whew. Thanks again for bearing with me. These posts really are mainly for me, because I can't tell you how my thoughts clear up when I write them out. I really should rename this "My Pensieve."

You should know that I think you're wonderful if you made it this far in this post. Though I tend to be sensitive about my writings/thoughts/opinions to a fault, I welcome your comments. :)

May God always season everything I say with the salt of His grace.

Blog Fever

All this introspection goes to your head!

I figured I should do a family update since my last and first blog was a too-long explanation of why I chose my blog name. So here we go!

Elizabeth celebrated 8 months to the day yesterday. I am astounded daily at how quickly this year has gone by. I cannot believe she will turn 1 in August! It seems like it's just around the corner and I should start making her birthday cake now. When I was pregnant, it was like my mind didn't let me think past the due date. I remember being surprised when people would plan things for, say, the middle of September. (Her due date was Aug.24.) Surely the world and time stop when you have a baby! Not so much.... Apparently they go into double-time.

She is smiling at the drop of a hat, babbling, and boy can that girl stand--with a little support from Mommy. :) Tony and I both think she might walk before she crawls. She is just so not interested in being on her tummy on the floor! Too little to see, I think.

Tony is still liking his job. We love our friends (who, for the most part, are also his coworkers), and I tell people all the time that they are the best part of Atlanta for us. They make this huge and impersonal city quite home-like for us country folk.

I am enjoying spring arriving in Georgia. I'm not one for cold weather (unless it's December 24 and 25), so I am in hog heaven in Hotlanta! It's our second spring here, and I'm loving not being pregnant this time. Elizabeth and I have started taking long walks and with all the new green of the grass and leaves and the tree blossoms, it's just so lovely.

I get very specific feelings about each season as they come, usually connected to past experiences. Last year I was fighting nervousness as I remembered springtime track. AH! Thankfully that has slackened somewhat this year and I can behave like a normal person who has not run a race in 5 years! You'd think I would have been over it.

I hear my baby girl talking in her crib, so I'm going to quit this post and go get her--my favorite thing in the morning. Thanks for your patience and indulgence.

Doxology Mine.

Names say so much. They are first impressions; they are identity. They shape your thought about a thing before you even encounter it. Accordingly, I wanted to give my blog a fitting title, so people could decide for themselves whether it would really be worth their time reading yet another no-name-nobody's two cents. After thinking long and hard about it, and at the risk of sounding overly pretentious, I came up with the present name. Yeah, I liked the sound of it, and that definitely satisfies the pseudo-poet in me, but more than that, I needed to christen my blog with a name that would remind me what I initially wanted this profusion of me me me to be about:

The Lord.

I hesitated for a while, wrestling back and forth about what it said about me if I considered my words and ideas and opinions worthy enough to spend hours, possibly, collecting and expressing them, not to mention to have my friends spend their time reading them. So if you're reading this right now, I am honored and humbled and more than a little anxious about what you might think. I don't think I have anything special to add to this table of rampant monologues, but tonight some friends convinced me of the value of putting thoughts-to-blog (pen to paper, as it were) in the hope that while I'm hashing out my faith day to day, you may be encouraged to do the same.

So I start this blogging season of my life with the prayer that it will become another branch of my life where I may add more glory to Jesus in some way. That's the intention I put in the name, anyway. Leave your first impressions as you will.