snow

Turning mourning into Gladness.

/ smiths2boys1girl / Leave a comment



It’s snowing again. Shhhh…don’t tell anyone but…I love it. I don’t care that it is almost April. It’s not that I don’t love Spring. I do. A lot. But fast upon the heels of Spring comes Summer and all her in-your-face heat, humidity and ‘hey, good luck with that hair gel’ nonsense. Don’t even talk to me about swimsuits. I suppose I’m even less looking forward to Summer this year *as if that’s possible* because we are not going to the beach for the first time in, like, forever. Even the year we did the Disney cruise and two weeks in Germany, we still went to the beach that Summer. I did get two brand spankin’ new bathrooms out of this 2014 deal, but will miss our annual beach week.

The white and gray bleakness of this Winter has fit right in with my mood this season. I can’t ever remember struggling with the darkness like I have the last six months. Impossible to see while living it, looking back I can see so clearly. I’ve focused on the lost; the regret; the pain. I’ve seen the joy; the light; and happiness but as if through fwog *The Wild Boy’s baby terminology for ‘fog’ and I just love it so much I can’t go back to the correct pronunciation.*

On the drive home from Roanoke last Sunday, I had a good out loud discussion with God. Sure, I was the only one speaking out loud, but you know what I mean. I told Him I just can’t go on like this anymore. Something has got to give. Someone has to do something. I turned my crying to crying out; my internal raging to external raging to the only One who can really get things started. 

I’ve really struggled with guilt. The times I feel happy, feel Joy, I also feel guilt. How dare I be happy when we have had so much loss! As I shouted out those thoughts, Jeremiah 31:13 covered me:

I will turn their mourning into gladness; I will give them comfort and joy instead of sorrow.

It doesn’t say not to mourn, not to have sorrow. But in our mourning there will be gladness; our sorrow will give way to comfort and joy. Not of our own doing, but by His.

Will I still mourn the preciousness we have lost? Always. Will I continue to feel times of sorrow? Until the day I die. But today, I am turning to the Comforter for my promised gladness, comfort and joy.

Advertisements

Part 2…2014

/ smiths2boys1girl / 1 Comment

Today was a really. long. day. After a really. long. night. Very little sleep until about 5:00 am, which coincidentally happened to be when my *could-very-soon-be-ex* husband finally left for work. I feel bad for him…he has a cold and he coughed and snored all night long. He also kept his wife awake. All. Night. Long. Three hours of sleeping like the dead is better than nothing, I suppose.

So my entire day was thrown off from the get-go. I managed to salvage it and get a lot done at the office. Had planned a stroll or 20 around the parking lot as my workout today but I neglected *in my sleepy stupor* to grab a hat, gloves or jacket when I headed out the door this morning.

So far, this post is a whole buncha whining.

Moving on. Now. To some fun randomness. Or as Mrs. Lady D likes to call it: “a list without numbers.”

Tomorrow is Day 3 of the New Year. Already, time is flying by! There are exactly 28 days until my Wild Boy turns 18 and 172 days until he graduates from High School. Stop the craziness!

It is currently snowing outside. I love snow. We have four “man vehicles” aka four-wheel-drive so if y’all need anything…give a shout out. As I have been sitting here, in the living room with the fireplace going, a plow truck has gone by four times. We have exactly 3 cm of snow on the ground. Where was this guy when when we Snowmageddon? We NEVER had a snow plow on our street, except for the one that got stuck at the top of the street and My Man and Boys helped pull him out. At which time he promptly drove away without ever plowing our street.

We pay off our two car loans between now and August of this year. Already, My Man is on the new-to-us car hunt. Or, new-to-me car hunt, rather. Apparently my back and forth mile to the office every day is racking up too many miles on the truck. So we are going to park it and buy something for me to drive. Call me confused, but why can’t I just drive the truck? It won’t matter come mid-August anyway as I will have the Red Jeep back as my very own since the Wild Boy is heading off to college. *did anyone laugh out loud with me when they read that?* We all know how that’s going to play out.

Last night My Man and I stood out in our front yard watching a bunch of those candle balloon luminary thingies launch from somewhere on the other side of Etta. I was wondering if it was the Steven’s family who released them. Does anyone in the OH ‘Hood know? We tried making our own whilst at the beach last summer. Also known as the OBX Fire of 2013. Just kidding…they dropped straight to the ground like a flaming rock.I just googled them and discovered they are officially called, “Sky Lanterns.” Fancy.

I’ve been fighting this whole writing thing. You know I have aspirations to be a “serious writer.” Apparently, it’s just not my thing. God has been talking to me about being who He created me to be…there goes the snow plow again, fyi…and that I need to stop being someone/something I am not. So it’s taken 52 a few years to figure that one out. You can teach a new dog…yadda yadda.

Tonight I began the big office clean-out. My goal is to go through and purge pictures this Winter. Every single time we went to the zoo, My Man took several rolls of film. How many pics of the two zebras and 1 camel at the National Zoo do we need? Also, tons of blurry, light back in your face shots of snakes through the glass? All of them are headed straight for the dumpster.

Stay safe and warm tonight.