Faith

/ Apple Hill Cottage / 19 Comments

Well, yes, since you asked, there are several reasons I haven’t written a post in over a month:

  1. I’ve been busy putting away the last of the garden: canning tomatoes, beans, pears, drying herbs, pickling peppers…
  2. It’s fall and the light is failing even though it doesn’t FEEL like fall with 70-80 degree temperatures; life seems like it’s on hold. Surreal even…
  3. The longer one waits in between posts, the less likely it is for anything to seem “write-worthy”.
  4. The world is going to hell, so how can I write about recipes, gardens, planting garlic, getting rid of groundhogs, drying herbs, trying to write a novel, or working on a bathroom?
  5. Devastating floods in Houston, Florida, Puerto Rico, earthquakes in Mexico, mass murders in Las Vegas, terrifying fires in California — puts all that other puny unimportant stuff in perspective, doesn’t it?
  6. I have nothing important to say, except God have mercy on us.

And really, that is the most important thing to say…

Listen to this beautiful version of Trisagion by Fernando Ortega.

Love Song

/ Apple Hill Cottage / Leave a comment

Christmas angel

Wishing you love, joy, peace, and hope this Christmas.

i don’t want a narrow view of love:
you love me and i’ll love you
— no —
don’t want just my needs, wants, don’t needs, don’t wants.

You give love unconditionally
not caring if i love you back right
or if i slip back into that
blind sight of loving you wrong.

there are countless languages that speak love
and i want to know them all
give them all
freely
to you.

i want to fly right over the chasm
where ordinary
freefalls and plummets;

instead you get my imperfect botched love
tainted by pride and selfish fears
while you give me
thirty roses
every day —
the extravagant
exquisite
excruciating
reminder
of those lost thirty years.

133. No Time to…

/ Apple Hill Cottage / 20 Comments

So what happens when one finally gets settled into a routine at the cottage where one has spent three years preparing to live?

Life.

Yes. Life.

Yes. Life. Happens.

There’s a new job.

There’s a volunteer commitment one made before the new job happened.

There’s cooking to do, gardens to plant, flowers to grow, pillow covers to make, Bible to study, VBS to get ready for, neighbors to visit, friends to talk to, firewood to haul, and, yes, there are still boxes to unpack, files to organize and a room to paint. As well as the bathroom to gut and redo, and the back porch to finish.

And suddenly, there’s no time to write.

Ha, silly me. I thought perhaps after we moved here, I’d have spare time to finish that novel… Now I can’t even find time to write 500 words for a blog post.

It’s the rhythm of life. Suddenly there is much going on, but it is the routine of day-to-day, interspersed here and there with a gorgeous full moon, the bloom of a new starburst flower, the scent of peonies, a gentle sunrise.

Sunrise in March

But that is life, isn’t it? Making the most of those boring bits of life in-between the great, amazing stuff that, if we are honest, doesn’t really happen all that often.

It’s what we do with the routine and the interruptions to our routine that are important. Read this C.S. Lewis quote and put it on your fridge.

 Yes, the unremarkable, the humdrum, the commonplace — that’s the life God is sending us. And do we sing on the way to work, or grump about the trucks that are making us late?

Do we gripe about having to fix dinner on a day when we don’t get home until 6:00, or do we look into the fridge and make it a game with ourselves to come up with the best we can with what’s there?

Do we go to visit the neighbor when we really should be…  (insert really important thing to do here.)

I have to admit that I’m only good at loving the uneventful life sometimes. I try to remember that God has given us this ordinary life to live for him. He sees when we grumble at our husbands for no good reason except a mood; he knows when we choose to be in a funk, rather than pray; and best of all, He understands when we chafe against the boring bits of ho-hum pfhh that so much of life seems to be…
Bare hill
and he graciously gives us new eyes to see beauty in the familiar.