when He was really in it all along...{a re-post}

one year ago, this very night, i spent my last evening in that little yellow home that had captured my heart, my dreams, my hopes.

one year ago, i stood on the edge of the unknown and took a deep breath and counted away the hours before that first step off the space of everything that i had clung to so tightly would be taken.

i should have known that He was in it all and through it all.

that in making that choice to follow His leading, He was hemming me in behind and before.




i know that now.


i see it clearly.




and as the snow falls and swirls and builds around this little home here that i find myself in,

i take a step back

a year ago

and remember...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

i let it surround me tonight...the hot water.

i let it ease away the emotions of the day.

i let it wash off the make-up, the daily dying...

i let the day slip away.

a day that was full of moments that i didn't want to end...

watching lyla run down the sidewalk ahead of me, zig-zagging to see which side held the better tasting snow...

livie, my shadow of these last few weeks, gripping my hand tightly in hers...

elias holding my hair in his hand, burying his face in my neck...

the love of a mr. & a mrs. who have allowed themselves to be loved and claimed as gramma & grampa...

walking into a room full of my wednesdays, women who i have grown to love deeply over these last years...

trying to whisper thanks through the tears...

sitting, surrounded by these same women as i wept while they prayed...as they lifted up my unknown to the One Who Knows. as they prayed words of life into my spirit that trembles with all the what-ifs...

oh, i didn't want to leave that moment... 

given an afternoon of care-free freedom by a gentle husband who knows how difficult this is...

laughing about honking and worrying and Jesus-loving-us and the poor sales-girl who got it all wrong...

moments with a friend who knows me and despite my odd quirkiness still loves me...

a wonder i can't get over...

we drove home in a blizzard, still more snow upon snow that kept tearing at my heart.  the beauty, the ugliness all rolling into something that leaves me breathless and grasping at something that can't be held.

and i don't want to forget...

i don't want to forget the beauty of this day or the ugliness of it either.


because there are gifts in both...


and i don't want to lose sight of that.