On this fine and blustery day…

 

 

Today was a good day 🙂  Or perhaps I just realized again what a good life I have 😉   It was windy and warm, and there was sunshine and blue skies.  Cassia, Leah and I went to our music lessons (Susannah had to stay home because she is sick with a virus, poor dear!), and it was lovely to be driving down the long straight country roads with the wind blowing, the sun shining, and our music blasting,  er…playing 😀  We have lots of good times on our ‘lesson days’.   Sometimes we’re tired and don’t hardly talk at all, other times we jabber incessantly and laugh until our sides hurt!

 

              At times we may be overcome with a feeling of helpless forsakeness.  This is surely not from the loving Father but from the father of lies.  Take God’s own promise and hold on.

Elisabeth Elliot

 

 

While Leah was having her violin lesson, her teacher’s husband was fixing the soundpost on a violin and then was showing me some songs on his mandolin.  Someday I want to play one of those.  Leah and I used to listen to a lot of Johann Strauss’ waltzes on a cassette tape entirely devoted to his music, and there was this particular song that we’d turn up the volume when the mandolin had a solo, but then we had to remember to turn the volume back down before the whole orchestra blasted us out of the house 😀

So Mr. B. was showing me some different styles of music on his mandolin.  He and his wife are amazing musicians…they must play at least fifteen instruments between the two of them (at the very least mind you!).

 

The presence of God became unutterably real and blessed, and I remember…stretching myself on the ground and lying there before Him with unspeakable awe and unspeakable joy.  For what service I was accepted I knew not, but a deep consciousness that I was not my own took possession of me which has never since been effaced.

J. Hudson Taylor

 

 

Then after a windy ride home,  Leah, Anna and I got our instruments and played ‘Red Haired Boy’…a fiddle tune, out on the woodpile.  I love spring!  It took me awhile to let go of winter, but I finally gave up on any hope of another good snowstorm and I’m finally ready for spring.  Now watch…we’ll have a blizzard in a couple of weeks!

I got to go on a little walk behind our house, too.  It was wonderfully exhilarating to walk down the weedy rocky lane in the middle of  a big flat cornfield, and the wind threatening to blow you across the county.   Do you ever feel like the wind helps blow away your troubles?  I felt like that tonight  🙂  I was thinking and praying for Meredith during part of my walk.    The sun was setting, and the killdeer were ‘singing’ 🙂   Killdeer are some of my favorite birds, mostly because of my memories of them when I was little, and Mommy telling me about how they pretend to be hurt to draw the predators away from the nest.   I loved it when I found their nests, and would sometimes worry about them when the farmer was about to plow his field.

 

 

Today, and especially this evening, I was reminded of how much Jesus loves me, and what a wonderful life He has blessed me with.  Once I read in a book called “The Heart of the King” by Ron Auch how the earth is full of His mercy.  If it were not for His mercy, it would fall completely apart.   It is easy for me to look at the bad and say, “where is the mercy?”  but He opens our eyes and says, “Look,  and show others how the earth is full of my mercy.”

 

 

But whenever I can say, ‘Thy will be done, teach me to do Thy will, O God, for Thou art my God’; it is like throwing  ballast out of an air-balloon–my soul ascends immediately, and light and happiness shine around me.

Henry Martyn

 

I was also blessed by this post, today.   His mercies are new every morning!

 

And I was just encouraged again…this update just came through on Meredith:

“Meredith has been more alert and responsive, and in less pain both yesterday and today. She enjoyed a visit from her uncle and grandparents on Tuesday. She’s wanted to eat, and they have given her soft food/liquids in small amounts at a time. She usually feels nauseated after eating, but has kept it all down. Her nights tend to be restless. Having Beth (a friend who also happens to be a paramedic) with her at night has been a GREAT help!”

 

I felt very rambly and happy today…hopefully you don’t mind my ramblings…especially because Cassia was also feeling rambly and happy, I think, because we were both inspired to write posts, and I think hers was kind of like mine 😀   I’m curious to read her take on today 🙂

 

 

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