Tinsel and lights and winter dusks.

I love the dusk of Winter. The sky is bright, as the sun goes down, oranges and pink kiss the blue, the air smells like snow, and it's quiet.

Winter is such a beautiful season, even when it's a billion degrees below zero. I always think that winter makes the world feel smaller and quieter. It's almost as if the snow tucks us in for the season and reminds us that we need each other. 

People hold doors open, push each other out of snow banks, shovel driveways, ring bells, say hello.  Cheeks are rosy, eyelashes are dusted with snow, we hold on to each other to keep from slipping on the ice....and maybe more than that.

It's finding joy in small, simple things. We laugh louder, love harder, and find compassion everywhere. 

I love it. I love the sound, and smells and the way everything twinkles.  The tinsel, and the lights and the history that oozes form everything. Who we are and where we come from is so, so apparent. 

I've been so emotional (baby) lately. I cried in the car when these people announced their pregnancy on the radio. I cried about a dog seeing it's owner come home from war. I cried about Amy Poehler getting a star on the walk of fame. I cried because of the sweet memories this season brings. 

So...as you can see, it's been a whole thing. I blame it on my period, which isn't a total cop out, but I think it's more than that. 

I've spent a lot of time being a stuck, but think in the season where everything is freezing, I'm melting. All of the ways I've tried to freeze out the things that i thought could hurt me, are the very things that reminding my heart of its rhythms again. 

My plans rarely work out, but my life has a way of always turing out okay.  My paths have never been straight or come with directions. I tend to forge ahead even when my guides are telling me otherwise. Along the way, though, I find people, and places that feel like home, even though the rings inside them would say they've just recently sprung up. 

One of the things i used to be really good is find "home" taking my Wisconsin roots and growing Minnesota branches, and i've sort of lost sight of that, but I feel my roots telling me that it's time.  

This season, these people, this career path...it's good. 

And I should let it be good. Sometimes the sweetest things come from the hardest work, and even though the getting there was hard, the arrival is sweet, and simple, and exactly what it needs to be. 

and I'm starting to really feel that. Not that i've arrived, necessarily, but that I can drop the anchor for awhile. I've got some learning and growing to do and this is where I need to do it. 

And it doesn't need to be scary, or cold. It looks like people who are rooting for you, and think you're great when you're not even trying. It's full of kids who LOVE you, and hang out around you because you've made a safe place for them.  

I'm taking the hard things, and learning from them. I'm embracing the past because it's made me more compassionate, it's shown me Jesus in ways I didn't expect, and it has taught me about what love looks like. 

In this season of expectant waiting, and a thawing heart, I am praying for the good sense to get out of God's way, to be willing to be used all sorts of ways. I'm praying that I use what I have where I am, and for that to be enough. 

I'm certainly not ready for what lies ahead, but I'm equipped to handle whatever is around the bend. 

Let the snow fall, let it create a pure heart in me, and you, and everyone this season. 

Let's hold mittened hands, and hold each other up, because the ice is slippery, and going down together hurts less, and it frequently ends in tears that come from laughing. 

Hug your families tighter, take time to smell the snow in the air, and pay attention to winter at dusk. 

Winter is here, and she is lovely. 

Also, obsessed with "oh come, oh come, Emmanuel" and "this cup" they are both just so perfect right now. listen to them when it's snowing, you won't regret it.