Stay in This . . . House

This time last year, I had visions of a new home. This old one, well, it was getting on my nerves. The carpet was dingy, the electricity, surgey, and the yard, weedy. I wanted to live in a new place, to make my mark on a new neighborhood, to have a bathtub that drained properly.

So I put my house up for sale.

I didn't do it rashly, at least it didn't seem that way. I prayed about it; I talked to people about it; I analyzed my finances and came up with a plan. I even made sure that there was another place I could afford that would meet all my new criteria before I sold this one and left myself without a home. And even though it was possible that my house would sell right away, I didn't really expect it.

I was being realistic, and I was calling it, "Trusting the Lord."

Fundamental Attribution Error: AKA Judging Others

I was headed to the gym after work one day last week. As I was making the right-hand turn onto one of the main thoroughfares through my part of the city, the lady to my right and just a smidge behind me honked. A second or two later, I realized she was honking at me. She thought I had cut her off.

I was indignant. Cut her off? Me? Surely she was the one in error, not following her own  turn lane into the far right lane of the road we were entering. She must be a horrible driver, I decided, thinking of her flagrant traffic violation. And then to honk at me?

I was convinced. I was right, and she is just a terrible person.

Do Nothing to Stop It

The sun shines white today, angling in through the blinds, and just through the window I see the red blooms on my quince bush stretching open in the warmth. When the first hint of them caught my eye a week or so ago, I worried. This unseasonably warm weather we have been having might mean certain death for the flowers and bushes that have fallen for the deceit. One year, a layer of snow covered my pansies.

But now that the thermostat has reach boldly up to the 70s in March - in Indiana - I think the flowers did what they had to do. Whatever was coming to life in them couldn't be stopped. And the lawns that grow green, and the purple and yellow crocuses that sneak up through the mulch, and the red buds that fall from the tree in my back yard - they all just give in to this season's redemption.

And I breathe in deep and am grateful that I can't stop it either, the life that's taking shape out there, the life that will take shape in here shortly, if I let it.

Food on Friday: Transferrance

For most of the past 10 years, it has been my goal to get up early in the morning and write. Though I'm not a natural morning person -- hopping out of bed before the alarm singing zippity-do-da -- I do find that I do my best writing in the morning once I'm up and going. And it only takes about 15 minutes for me to wake up.

The problem? Getting out of bed.

A Fast from Fasting

I'm not fasting for Lent this year.

There, I said it.

It's not like I believe it's a Christian requirement that I fast during Lent, though sometimes I add that burden to myself. But I love the church calendar; I love following along with believers around the world in our readings and our disciplines; and I love the feeling I get when I finish fasting.

There, I did it.