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Singing The Carter Family songs or at least trying to…

Contrasting Mornings

Fall

Reasons fall is, will be, and always has been good:

1.Good friends to share a hot, uncrappy cup of coffee

2. Friends who go see friends and make them late for their hair appointment, where they chop off all their hair and look like Audrey Hepburn (aka really freaking hot).

3.   Making fried eggs with basil, tomato, and English Muffins (three times in three days).

4.  New friendships that feel old (the very best kind of old).

5. Looking forward to a my real home, filled with real friends, a family room, a fireplaces, fire, cinnamon rolls the Amish way (the only way), hills, and color.

6.  Jazz.  If jazz were not included in the fall/winter play list, I might as well forget the cold altogether.

Life.  It’s got this bitter-sweetness that sometimes tears me apart.  Fall has always been a time of settled change.  It’s a significant time of scheduled appointments that cost a fortune, aka class.  It’s a time of long evenings and very cold nights.  I find myself staring into the future with my sunglasses still on, and it looks very dimly lit.  It’s not hopeless, but the way looks just a little bitter.

I guess A.W. Tozer said it right, and good, and true when he said, “…That veil is made of living spiritual tissue (referring to the veil that hides God’s glory, as it did with Moses, and how that veil is no longer needed, but how we still where it);.. To touch it is to touch us where we feel pain.  To tear it away is to injure us, to hurt us and make us bleed, to say otherwise is to make the cross no cross and death no death at all.  It is never fun to die.  To rip through the dear and tender stuff of which life is made can never be anything but deeply painful yet that is what the cross would do to every man to set him free.”  God is a mysteriously terribly good God.  I think pain is part of life, as there would be no life without it, and certainly no growth.  But sometimes pain seems unnecessary and when looking at God, think God is not in it, and God is cruel. This is what I’ve learned from pain.  God’s presence in the healing is more powerful than the pain that caused(s) the hurt.

And God is personal.  He knows what gets us.  So, as I continue to learn how to use my wonderful personality to ring up customers on the ridiculously confusing monstrosity of a cash register, and smile my confused smile as I try to let them pay, I remember that God is good, even when customers are overly weighted and tapping their metaphorical toe as I say, “Um…can you say that again?”  Maybe it’s in the everyday that God tears the veil, one painful, paying customer at a time. I guess I’ll let the bitter come with the sweet…

Sometimes sweet is as simple as a smile.   I sometimes surprise  people with a smile.  I know because their rather grim expression pauses for just a second before it lights up.  I love that.  I love when a smile makes my day grand and when I can surprise others with just a little joy.  God isn’t gonna let us die in a joyless existence and he won’t let us die alone (and I’m not talking about a physical death here.  I’m talking about the spiritual death we must die in order to live for Christ).

P.S. Right now the sweet is pumpkin pie cream cheese and I definitely smile when I’m eating it with my pumpkin bagel.