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Unspeakable Joy

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Welcome back, my beloveds, to the last week of Advent and the countdown to Christmas! We are so unprepared! Nevertheless, time will go on and Christmas will come and go – whether I am prepared or not. Hopefully, this little post will help us all get in the mood. Thought I’d share about the final theme of Advent for this week: Joy. Our youngest experienced the joy of her first snow day today. A new experience for us… buses cancelled and therefore no one shows up to school? What’s with that?! I’m not complaining though… it means I don’t have to drive in it. Bonus. 

(and so has the snow !!)

This is not the first time I’ve mused about Joy. It’s a recurring theme on mittonmusings.com. If you are interested, go back and check these posts out. They’ll make you smile:

Unspeakable joy. It’s one of the lyrics in the adapted Joy to the World hymn that’s circulating around this time of year. I wonder, though, what does it mean? Unspeakable joy. Usually when you experience “joy” you wanna chat about it, no? Shout: ”Snow day! No school! Hurray!” Tell the world about your experience? Spread the news? Does unspeakable mean indescribable? So dumbfounded that you can’t speak about it? Or awe? Like the marvel at something that just takes your words away. I’m thinking it must be like that.

I’m also guessing it takes a little bit of discipline to see those things around you that bring that unspeakable joy. I’m imagining a new mom… hectic chaos in the midst of bottles, burps and bathing. It’s not until that early morning feeding when the quiet allows you to take a moment, when no one else is around, to marvel at your baby’s tiny features. So perfectly designed. The softness of their delicate skin, and the sweet smell of sour milk and baby powder. If you know, you know. I wonder if Mary had that moment with baby Jesus. I’m sure she did. In fact, I am sure she had it a few times. 

I’m learning to discover it more and more as I take the time to slow down and practice seeing those little things in the world around me. Tiny footprints in the snow. The flame of a warm fire as it dances. It’s dangerous. Fire consumes. Yet, if you take the time to quietly observe things, you will see the beauty in it. That’s when that marvel comes in to play. That’s when you begin to get that awestruck “joy” that there is Someone so much bigger than you who has mastered the tiny intricacies of life as we know it. And that Someone has set them in to place so that this big wide world goes ’round with the exact precision it needs to be set at. Amazing.

We had a unique experience this past week when we were decorating our front porch. We discovered a dead pigeon on the lawn. Now before you scroll away, hear me out. We don’t know what happened. There was one tiny blood streak. A hawk maybe. Or a cat? We don’t get a lot of pigeons, so I think it was dropped in from elsewhere. And I don’t want to glorify death, but there was something beautiful about this bird. Each feather layered in a silky, smooth collection. Some feathers glistening in green and purple iridescence. A striking contrast to the grey and white body feathers. Each wing stretched out to reveal strong flight feathers. Yet so light as to carry this creature on the wind. It hit me with that awe and wonder for a moment. I was able to somehow experience the joy in death. It allowed me to observe a creature I would otherwise not have been able to examine so closely had it been alive. Do you get it? I hope you see it through my words.

Beauty in the everyday. Photo via Popular Science

And it’s the wish I have for you, my friend, as you go into this holiday season. I wish you the chance to experience “unspeakable joy” this Christmas. To practice seeing the beauty – even in some not so beautiful experiences. Perhaps, like many, the holiday season is not an easy one for you. It is not the “happy” season everyone talks about. Joy is different. It goes beyond the happy to a deeper, somehow indescribable and unspeakable emotion of awe in the essence of Christmas. The emotion behind the truth that the Creator of the entire world came to the earth as a tiny, helpless babe. Do you feel it? I wish it for you, my beloved. Joy, unspeakable Joy, to the world!!

Thanksgiving Prayer

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It’s Canadian Thanksgiving and we have a lot… a lot… to be Thankful for this year. It’s been a crazy whirlwind of life changing moments in the last few months, but God has been faithful and our ever constant source of support and comfort. Especially when the moments got just a bit too tough for my little human brain to handle.

So for today’s post, I thought I’d be super candid and simply write out a thanksgiving prayer. I hope it brings you joy this thanksgiving weekend.

nathan-dumlao-unsplash

Dear Lord,

Thank you for being in charge. Thank you for keeping it all together when I feel like I don’t have it all together. Thank you for being there in the little things. Like my garden spider. The monarch butterfly. The simple daisies and the vine of red.

Thank you for allowing me tears and laughter. Thank you for special visits with family and friends. For blessing us with “Itsnotta” farm and our dreams and adventures now, and in the years to come. I’m grateful and humbled at what You have given to us each and every time we give “the tour”. I marvel at the details and how you orchestrated it all – just for us.

I thank you Lord for allowing us to be pushed out of our comfort zones. To integrate into a community where things are not the same as they were before. For pushing me to get out there and try. Please God, give me the courage to continue to be bold and a light in a world who so desperately needs You. Please help me encourage our children to grow in their independence as they grow into adulthood. Protect them and send your angels to guide, comfort and shelter them out on their own. May they feel the safety of “coming home” often. May they feel the freedom to raid the fridge and bring their dirty laundry home to mom.

Help me to be patient with others who don’t see eye to eye with me. Grant me supernatural love for those personalities who clash with my own. Allow me gentle words. Less sarcasm. Less cutting comebacks and more time to think before I speak.

Thank you, Lord, for bringing people into our lives who encourage. For a Christian heritage that has given us a strong foundation. May we never take that for granted. Help me to remember to take more time for those who need it. Help me to be aware of those who are on the sidelines and be an encourager.

Thank you, Lord, for the talents and gifts you have given me so generously. Help me to use them well and for Your kingdom. To not be proud – as those gifts and talents are not my own, but given to me to use well. Thank you for your goodness, and blessing us with adequate finances, a source of income, abundance of food, shelter and so many tangible items that surround us. Remind me to share and to not take anything for granted. For these things are Yours.

And finally, Lord, thank you for this little piece of the internet where I can freely express my joys and thoughts and musings with others. I pray that you use it to bless strangers. To encourage. To be real as well, allowing others to “taste and see” for themselves what you have done for us. Life is not always easy. Thank you. Thank you for pruning and sharpening us through trials… and for reminding us that only through pruning do we bear fruit.

As we go into this week, give us the energy we need to continue to do all the things. The resignation to push forward and do all the hard stuff. The self control to choose peace when we are pushed to our limits. And in it all, help us to be thankful!

With all the sincerity of my heart,

Amen.

PHOTO: FRANK SPINELLI/GETTY IMAGES

Decorating for Fall

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This was the display at the front of our new church on Sunday. Simple. Rustic. Country. And I love it! ‘Tis the season of change in Ontario and it’s never more evident than in the heart of farm country! Our neighbours have started harvesting the soy bean field behind us and we have seen several large green farm vehicles in various fields around. We are still learning about what goes on and will probably never fully understand it all, but we hear that the dust is about to start flying and the roar of tractors and diesel engines will likely be heard for the next several weeks. Months, apparently, if you harvest cow corn for winter. It’s not dry and ready until December we’ve been told – if you want to “silo” it.

The sun sets so early now. Yet the colours are absolutely spectacular! Vibrant pink hues against the golden fields and touches of auburn yellow and orange forests mix with the still green rolling hills of our pathway home. Tonite, as we walked the dog, I marvelled at a vine so crimson, it looked almost dyed. Dipped in some cherry stain – rich and fermented. Like a well aged wine.

Of course, fall fair season has begun. That’s when your sense of smell takes over from sight. Fried donuts and funnel cakes. Cinnamon and cloves in the baked goods. Apple pies. Pumpkins and root vegetables. Rich coffee with cream that warms your insides. Now that I have my own barn and have been to the feed lot, I have learned that hay and straw actually has a very sweet smell. Again, slightly fermented. Okay, I suppose you have to include that sharp ammonia smell of urine and manure, since we are musing about the whole gamut of the senses. Let’s pretend we worked hard to muck out the stalls and only fresh, sweet straw is left okay?

My husband is thankful the mosquitoes have disappeared. My garden spider is gone. A few fuzzy caterpillars still cross my path now and then and the squirrels and chipmunks are busier than ever. In the heat of the mid day the wasps still swarm my porch and this weekend the lady bug invasion began. Hundreds of biting beetles snuck in through the cracks and hovered at my front door. Yuk. We vacuumed them up into oblivion.

Via houseofhawthorns.com

I marvel and muse at this time of year because nature simply cannot help but display the majesty of a master artist. If you live in a place that seldom changes with the seasons, I pity you because God’s creation is so diverse, it’s a shame that the entire world doesn’t get to see what we do in Canada. I hope you can love it through my words.

There truly is a season for everything and a time for every activity under Heaven. A unique design for beauty in, essentially, preparation for death. I am trying to prepare myself for winter. It’s an inevitable reality. And like death, it will come all to quickly. Country people prepare for winter. Wood is cut and piled. Chains and winter tires. We need a snowblower. My new bunnies need to be protected from the wind. I wonder if we prepare for death as much as we do winter? That’s a dark reality for thought at another time. Let’s go back to donuts and funnel cakes, shall we?

Canadian Thanksgiving is coming up. We will be celebrating here at the farmhouse and my porch display is lacking. I’m trying to up my decorating game – even found a box labelled “fall” with goodies in it for use. I’m gonna try. I just can’t help but celebrate the beauty it represents! Yet, I am reminded that it goes so much deeper than orange hues and pumpkins – it points to the One who set science ablaze with seasonal changes and a fully functional world based on lifecycles and minute cellular workings that cause food chains to explode with sights, sounds, smells and tastes!

We truly have much to be thankful for. Be blessed, my friends, for there is a supernatural Creator who decorated for fall just for us!