January, February, March, oh my!

Can it really be two and half months since I have posted on my blog? What in world have I been doing for two months??

Two highlights…

A chalet at Timberline Lodge

A surprise from my hubby. After the horrible fall semester we finally had a few breaths to share. We snowboarded. Well, Andy snowboarded, I fell down the hill a lot. Andy is practically a pro at snowboarding, as he is at most things. (Have I told you about when I put a yo-yo in his stocking as a silly, joke toy? He tears off the wrapper and starting swinging it all over the place! Unbeknownst to me, Andy is a pro yo-yoer. I shouldn’t have been so surprised.) AND, let me tell you about the food! We stuffed ourselves on Friday night. This restaurant treats you like royalty. I could bore you with all the details that excite no one but me, but just go there for dinner sometime. It won't disappoint.

A niece named Eden

My older brother and sister-in-law gave birth the Eden Mary Johnson on February 19^th. Eden’s big sister, Ava Lee, couldn’t be more thrilled. Adjustments to come though… being a big sister has a lot of responsibilities.

With spring comes a deck garden – I hope. Andy is going to build me planter boxes so I can grow veggies and herbs. It will be my second try. Last time I grew tomatoes, which I didn’t dead head enough, so I just got a few very small tomatoes, banana peppers, which the squirrels came and ate all the leaves, so the plant hardly grew, Serrano peppers, which were great, and basil, which I didn’t grow enough of. I’m not sure yet what I will grow this time…

Even with the anticipation of spring and summer, I just can’t seem to shake off the clouds which have been hanging around me since the fall. I’ve been desperately trying to not let my gloominess keep me from my time in God’s word, but I have found that even though I have kept the study it has become ritualistic and joyless. I’m not hearing God. I’m not responding to Him. The hardest part of it is that even though I can say these things I don’t know what to do about it. I think the hardest thing in my relationship with God is in knowing what his will is for my life. What am I supposed to do, God? is my cry. And either I’m not listening or God isn’t telling me yet.

I’m finding myself increasingly dissatisfied with my life – my job, my ministry, myself. I’m at a point where my instinct is to leave everything that I have been doing and start fresh. I want to quit my job and get a new one, quit our church and go somewhere else, reinvent myself and forget all my regrets. But, even though I usually only know God’s will in hindsight, I do know that this is not His will for me. I know that I’m supposed to be fine and happy with wherever God has me, but sometimes I wonder if God doesn’t place in us discontentment for the reason of moving us. Maybe God does want me to change my job or my church. Dissatisfaction can be a fine motivator sometimes.

Well, I don’t know how much longer I will be oppressed and afflicted, but I’m going to fight and try to keep going. And try to quiet myself and hear only God. Two things that stare at me from the edges of my computer screen each day:

If you scream for insight and call loudly for understanding, if you pursue it like you would money, and search it out as you would hidden treasure, than the Lord will be awesome to you, and you will come into possession of the knowledge of God. - Proverbs 2:3-5

-and-

29. Resolved: Never to count that a prayer, nor to let that pass as a prayer, nor that as a petition of prayer, which is so made, that I cannot hope that God will answer it; nor that as a confession, which I cannot hope God will accept. – Resolutions of Jonathan Edwards

I am desperate and needy. Heal me, Lord.

P.S. Rent the movie Hot Rod. Very funny, if you like that kind of thing.