january days

quiet days.  i like it when the sun hangs low in our backyard.  in late afternoon it slants through our pine trees, shooting in through the kitchen windows, lighting up mama's african violets and the blue glass bottle and the hanging apple.  when you try to cook though, it glows gold in your eyes and makes the cabinets and everything else especially hard to find.  i forget how much i laugh when anne is home until she stays for a while.  then i remember. i love my bros, too.  chris has started a new shift at work so he has come over in the evenings this week.  we keep our white lights strung up in the school room and he and i have talked out most of life's problems there this week on the soft couch that half-swallows everyone who sits in it.  chris has talked code over cups and cups of hot ginger brews and i've interpreted them - or tried to.  in the shadowy patches of twinkling lights and dark, i can only make out some of his expressions.  almost all of them are mischievous smirks - so i never know if i've really guessed his secrets or not.  but he goes away saying 'enough, delilah!' and gives me hope that i just might have.  abe says 'one thing for certain:  by the time i go home y'all will be ready.'  {he always says that, and we're always sorry to see him leave}  most of the day he stays tucked in his reading corner studying, but he emerges and will walk across the kitchen hunched, both arms hanging loosely by his sides, wide-eyed and gaping.  then he'll whisper something ridiculous until we laugh.  our cousin who's about five years old sat on a pew in front of abraham and myself one day last week.  he leaned over to his mom during the service and said something.  she glanced back at us, then at him and tried not to laugh.  later she told me, 'he asked me where abe's mouth was.'
  it's amazing how sad i feel over one deleted post. ONE.  yes, yes.  i accidentally deleted a post from my blog.  after i did it i thought - wait...did i just ??? no!!!  but i did it.  it's forever gone.  and that is why i should stick to hard and fast, true blue, authentic paper and ink.  none of this digital business where, with a couple of clicks anything i've written can be erased.
   yet, here i am, writing yet another post.  writing it and being determined that i will not be beaten by the digital age.

listen to this and soak it in.

oh life.  it's a good good  thing.  thank you God for life.

here's a  verse that has been a gold nugget today:

‎'Then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thine health shall spring forth speedily:and thy righteousness shall go before thee; the glory of the Lord shall be thy rearward.'

Isaiah 58.8

 Today we had the little girl we keep and the transformation a baby can make on my daddy gets me every time.  and abe too, he was all goos - and bubbles.  

    This statement is always an understatement of what the reality is and so many things go into it that I can't just say why in one sentence. But if you've met her, then you know it.  And if you're one of her kids, then you know it even more.  And that is, that my mama is amazing.  

   happy thursday.