It is a NEW day....

I just came back from walking the kids to school. As I was on my walk, I was thinking a "thought" to jot, and I sat down with the intention to write it out, but as usual, got caught up in checking Facebook first instead. Funny thing, though, I looked at one of my friends' status updates, and it was exactly the thought I was thinking. She wrote simply, "It is a NEW day..."

I clicked on the "like" feature (if you're on facebook, you know what I mean) but what I really meant was "AMEN!"

It's been raining for days. Hard, oppressive, pelting rain that makes you feel sorry for ever going outside, and the kind that makes you wonder if building an ark might be in order. It's been wearing on me, all this grey sky and rain, so much that yesterday, my own status read something like, "I can't move, I've done nothing, nada, zip, zilch. The tea's good, though." It was remarkable that I actually got up to make the tea. Today, the sun came out, and it was glorious. It's not altogether brilliant and bright and cloudless, but I'll take it. It may as well be! It was so warm, I stuffed my mittens into Keelin's backpack and left them for her to bring home from school later.

The thing is, though, that it was still a day yesterday. That's what struck me on my walk. The sun didn't have to come out for it to be a day. (I paused to think for a second, and I could hear birds singing outside. Ahh...) God still made yesterday, and the day before, and the sun did still rise, even though it was nowhere to be seen. And so often I forget that. I've probably even written this whole thought before somewhere. You can hear it all over, people saying, "will this ever stop?"

It's amazing how easy it is to fall into our circumstances.

I realized yesterday, by the afternoon, how much I'd let my circumstances take over, and how much I'd helped them out. What I mean, is, how I'd let my "it's-the-depth-of-winter-and-I-feel-like-all-I-want-to-do-is-crawl-up-in-my-cave-and-hibernate-till-March" feelings consume me. I let my house become a cave. I looked at the thermostat yesterday: 62 degrees! Brrrr... really, if I were a cold-blooded creature, I'd have been frozen solid. No wonder I hadn't moved! There were six lightbulbs that needed changing. (Most of our light fixtures have two or three lightbulbs in them, and I let one or two in each one burn out... so not dark, but definitely dimmer in the house.) I hadn't let light in by turning the levelor blinds open either. It was dark and cold in here. Quiet, too. No music. That's really unusual for me. I realized on my walk, with some good praise music in my ears, how long it had been since I'd listened to music.

So, no music, no light, no warmth. A cave. I'd made myself a cave!

Is it just me who thinks that something happens and I go, "well, that's just the way it is." And I live in it. I even furnish the cave and hunker down in it. And by cave I mean, whatever the circumstances are that surround you. Busy-ness can be the cave you choose to dwell in. You can get so busy you solve it by adding three more things to your schedule that are intended to relieve stress, but really, just make yourself more busy. I have been driving my wagon in a rut of "this is just the way it is" in areas I am afraid to take a leap in, or things I feel I don't deserve. I fluff up my pillow and rest in the way it is.

God though, I know, doesn't want us to live like that. In a cave, or driving in a rut. He wants us to pull up the blinds even if it's raining. There's still light. There's still a day that He has made going on. My friend who wrote her status, had three status updates before it, all about all the trials she's going through with illnesses, and household frustrations like water heaters, and such. It's so easy, SO easy, to let yourself get wrapped up in that. That's why I found her update such an encouragement to me. It is a NEW day. Yes, and it will have troubles of its own, but it's new, and we have the hope, the glorious hope that God is providing the day and the deliverance for us through our circumstances. He ALWAYS does. He is faithful. THIS is the day the Lord has made, we will REJOICE and be GLAD in it. It's not written ...we will fall asleep and wait for it to pass in it. Another friend reminded me of my own words, "liquid sunshine," I almost always call it. I'd totally forgotten.

Fixing my eyes on Him reminds me that He is doing a great work.

Fixing my eyes on the cave makes me a bear.

He brought me up out of the pit of destruction, out of the miry clay, And He set my feet upon a rock making my footsteps firm. Psalm 40:2