Noticing More Beauty

   Winter and Fall played together today - I stayed near the window to see. Fall brought her leaves and Winter his sticks and they brandished them furiously. They played in the wind and they drew on the clouds and altered a nearby hill. And when daylight was done, they painted the sky in color and vibrance and chill. As dark settled in, the Winter remained to play with his toys through the night. His fun left the ground where the two friends had played all covered in crystals of white. The Sun rose on Winter alone in the yard, the time for friendship had passed; Fall packed her color and tokens of Summer, and left her last leaves on the grass. ~Kerrie C.

The day is cold and dark and dreary, It rains and the wind is never weary, The vine still clings to the moldering wall, But at every gust, the dead leaves fall, And the day is dark and dreary... The winter rains have begun. The cold wet blew steadily last night, pouring down the panes and collecting in puddles, sounding incessantly on the roof. There is a thought dripping in my mind this morning as well, chilling my mood. It repeats, over and over, with deliberate monotony, the name I call myself after the conversation before sleep, "Failure. Failure. Failure." And I reach for the blanket of shame and retreat behind the barrier of guilt, habitually donning an icy demeanor to keep him at arm's length - The Man who misfortuned to speak the concern that resounded like disappointment in my ears. We have been here before. These cold, wintery days have come in seasons past as well. My prevalent insecurities have made me prone to hear opportunities f...

We drove out to the family business to watch the eclipse on Monday. An interesting phenomenon to see the young and old alike peering at the sky in unique eyeware to watch something small obscure something large. As the lunar orb passed before the solar orb, and the shadow fell upon us, there was a surprising temperature drop. Astronomers tell us that if the sun were the size of a beachball, the moon would be about the size of a pin head. How can something that small effectively obscure something so large, dimming the sky and chilling the air? There was a type of eclipse in my soul this week as well. Josh and I squabbled one evening - a sad ending to a lovely weekend away. The truth be told, he expressed his feelings on something (ancient and forgotten) and I completely overreacted. I genuinely felt hurt, but instead of helping our communication with an "I-think-what-you-meant-to-say-was..." statement, I chose to be hurt and gave full vent to my wo...

The darling newlyweds came over recently. Those we poured into at the high school ministry - now blazing their own trail in the world. He has taken a position at Dutch Bros. - famous concocters of coffee and syrup and positive teenagers. On his first day, they handed him a brand new laptop and a wage quite generous for he of less than a quarter-century years. The brothers-from-Holland offer catered lunches, a break-room filled with ping-pong tables and arcade games, and, of course, all the coffee you can drink. Jobs are coveted at this local business, recently written up in Forbes Magazine as one of their Small Giants. Everyone want to be a "bro-rista" or have a desk at headquarters. The company seems to reward everyday work ethic. Rather than demanding more-than-the-job-description work ethic, Dutch Bros rewards the average and finds their employees readily go above-and-beyond. The management seems to be more concerned about creating a family of well-rounded, energetic...