Today I’m tired.

Actually, it’s been several days, and no matter how quietly I pass the hours, I never seem to become revitalized. Perhaps there’s a baby sneaking every nutrient I ingest? Perhaps.

Tired.

If there were children, this would be the morning that they’d all tumble down the stairs as usual, halting suddenly at the empty kitchen. Where’s Mama? If they were children like me, they’d have an entire era of Playmobil set up long before they thought to actually go looking for Mama. (The simple trust children have that everything’s just fine with the world!)

But there are no children. Just a husband who ordered extra sleep for me this morning, who made coffee, who’s quietly at work fooling around with computer parts, and who promised to go to the office and bring back all of my work for me. It’s not just sleep, I tried to explain to him. It’s deep-down tired — like I just don’t want to do anything. And if I give into it, I’m afraid I’ll end up taking the next ten weeks off from life. That’s how tired I feel!

Then you’ll take ten weeks off, and I’ll pull your weight, he says.

I just smile. Maybe not ten weeks, but just today? If today I can just go slow, eat for two, and stare at the misty rain now and again, I might just start to feel better.

Ahhh.

This morning I’m watching the white, foaming crests and their rising and falling, and I’m thinking, “Who establishes the mountains by His strength, being girded with might; who stills the roaring of the seas, the roaring of their waves, and the tumult of the peoples…

They who dwell in the ends of the earth stand in awe of Your signs; You make the dawn and the sunset shout for joy. You visit the earth and cause it to overflow; You greatly enrich it; the stream of God is full of water; You prepare their grain, for thus You prepare the earth. You water its furrows abundantly, You settle its ridges, You soften it with showers, You bless its growth. You have crowned the year with Your bounty, and Your paths drip with fatness. The pastures of the wilderness drip, and the hills gird themselves with rejoicing. The meadows are clothed with flocks and the valleys are covered with grain; they shout for joy, yes, they sing. –psalm 65

We’re here, in Maine.

It’s cold and raining, just as they predicted. Somehow that fits the idea of what the Maine shore is supposed to be, though. Gray. Stormy. You pitted against natural elements. If you want warm and easy, try a place on the Gulf.

I’m in the Ernest Hemingway living room. I never like white paint — true white paint — but somehow, here, it’s perfect. It’s been all warm woods, dark leather, and bits of green. This year, she added orange. Papaya, to be exact. It’s enough color to cheer up the drizzly day.

The wall of windows and doors reveals a gray, tumultuous bay. I was worried the fog would have crept up the lawn and hidden the water from our sight completely, but no. There are the breakers, being tossed on the shore by wind and rain. It’s magnificent.

I had a bit of sushi for lunch. Every time I eat it, I wonder, do I really love the food, or is it just an excuse to taste wasabi? I love, love, love wasabi.

This afternoon can linger as long as it likes, as far as I’m concerned. The rain on the roof is soothing, the view is inspiring, and the afghans are warm. I just might nod off to the sound of Andrea’s bustle and Ryan’s low conversation…

Was just thinking (and writing to a friend) that change is really the only way that we have to identify God’s faithfulness in our lives. I could look back through history and see that God is a faithful sort of being, but in my own life, such constancy would blend with the backdrop were it not for the occasional (and sometimes frequent) changes of scenery. He writes on each page of our lives with the invisible ink of His life-sustaining faithfulness — and every once in awhile, that magical pen of change comes along and brings to the light the words He’s been writing.

His constancy really is amazing. The fact that in each season, He manifests Himself through people and situations so clearly, and yet is not constrained to those things — that is more than we can always understand. The moment change happens, He is near us, speaking and loving and caring for us in new ways, through new people and situations. And if we are ready to simply cling to Him, and not to the earthly things He sometimes wraps Himself in, then we are more apt to find joy in each morning and not wake up weeping for our yesterdays.

Yes, change is good. It clarifies and separates the good things of His hand from His hand itself.

But change is hard, too. And He knows that. That’s why He’s already there, in the new place, being what He’s always been: constant.

The alarm went off a little early today, and I reminded Ryan that it was for him. There were 15 minutes of coffee grinding and getting dressed and chatting before he ran out the door, and I found myself here on my couch, curled up in a blanket but enjoying the cold of a new morning. It reminded me so much of so many mornings…

Mornings that ended last year, but that used to be the norm. An early alarm, and I would slip into the kitchen to prepare our brew — enough for our two big mugs. Then out to the porch, regardless of how chilly, with my Bible and journal. In a moment, she would join me. We would sip coffee together and survey the gardens, perhaps comment on them, perhaps just enjoy them, occasionally just shake our heads and silently wonder how they’d gotten to that weed-ridden state. She would stare into space and then tell about a daughter’s need for clothes, or what a son’s future might hold, or how maybe Daddy would let her buy some new paint for such-and-such project. I would usually just listen, smelling grass and drinking coffee, snuggled under my layer of warmth, secure.

I loved those mornings. They were the sort of thing that seemed so special that even at the time, I dared not take them for granted. It was the quiet of the morn, before the day’s invasion, and it was fellowship with one dearest to me.

I would sit and think how much I loved her (and wonder how in the world she rolled out of bed with vision already hatching in her imagination!)

Sooner or later, a little man would make his comical appearance, and our moment of quiet would be broken. She would leave the porch, and I would be left alone to quickly journal, or just to drink the last sip.

Of course, then there was a grown man who made his appearance, and our moments of quiet, day after day, became memories.

Dear memories, for sure. I still find myself sitting and thinking how much I love her.

There are some new pictures on our flickr site.