Counting my blessings.

I sense a need to remind myself of all of the joys/delights/blessings that truly abound in my life.

For instance, it's a gloomy it's raining it's pouring the old man is snoring...going to bed and bumping my head and not getting up in the morning day. I like days like this, even if it means I'm a little less productive than I should be. The creek rushes and rises a little bit higher, walking barefoot in the puddles. I'm also watching Sleepless in Seattle, which has a fantastic soundtrack; I just watched the section where Sam Baldwin talked about how much he loved his wife. It reminds me of the incomparable love of Christ, and also about the potential for being loved in that way some day.

Doctor Marcia Fieldstone: What are you going to do?
Sam Baldwin: Well, I'm gonna get out of bed every morning... breath in and out all day long. Then, after a while I won't have to remind myself to get out of bed every morning and breath in and out... and, then after a while, I won't have to think about how I had it great and perfect for a while.
Doctor Marcia Fieldstone: Tell me what was so special about your wife?
Sam Baldwin: Well, how long is your program? Well, it was a million tiny little things that, when you added them all up, they meant we were suppose to be together... and I knew it. I knew it the very first time I touched her. It was like coming home... only to no home I'd ever known... I was just taking her hand to help her out of a car and I knew. It was like... magic.

I'm thankful for a God who has promised never to forsake me, even when He seems absent. I'm thankful for friends that persist in loving my stubborn self and assuring me of my standing as His Beloved. I'm thankful for my family, for a mother who "loves me to pieces"; her words, not my own. ; p

I'm thankful for sips of cider, tea, and irish mint mochas, for the words of cummings, tennyson, donne. For the Word.

I love all of the memories I have in the pictures on my wall: the birth of a foal, fresh out of the womb; bottle feeding a baby ewe; my dad and I on the beach with my hand resting lightly on his; the salt water-cut dunes and cliffs bordering the Pacific; siamese kittens with the bluest of eyes, rainbows and cloud scattered skies; silos at sunset; the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben on the Thames highlighted by the pier bulbs; redwood-covered creeks; the light of the Sun streaming through the cathedral at Canterbury; the un-swimmable pump water at Bath; an impressionistic painting set in a field of poppies; a profusion of spring bulbs and daffodils, and so on. And I could go on.

I have a little collection of cards that I've saved that remind me of the beautiful people who have taken the trouble to write me cards for birthdays, Christmas, etc. These remind me that people do care, that perhaps I'm not quite as alone as I think I am.