Rain!

It's raining! It's raining! I mean not just sprinkling or drizzling but really raining!

You think I'm too excited? Wrong! :) I think that last year it rained 2 times total . . . really!

Anyway, I love the rain :) I love it when the sky is dark and cloudy. I love the smell of the air right before, during and after the rain. I love it when the rain is warm and you can go out and play in it. I love it when the rain is cold and you can stay inside and curl up with a blanket and watch a movie or read a book. I love thunder and lightening too but that's another day. Today, I love the rain!

Now if only I could remember to think of the tests and trials that God allows in my life the way I think of the rain. To remember that they come in seasons. To remember that some are really hard and some are more like a light drizzle. To remember that in the midst of them, I can choose joy, to laugh and play and love. To remember that they are meant to draw me closer to Him and to His word like that blanket and good book. To remember that He is doing something in me, something new, something fresh!

Pretty is the rain!

Smiley Faces

You know how there are those people who when writing ALWAYS use exclamation marks (I just happen to be one of them), well I have discovered as of late that I am a habitual user of smiley faces. I LOVE them!!! I am especially fond of using them while chatting, like on facebook. I can just be typing along and if a smile comes on my face (or in my heart), it comes out on the keypad as well :)

I not only love smiley faces while typing but in life. There is nothing like the smile on someones face to let you know that whatever you did wrong is ok or that they know just what your thinking. A smile on my own face can change the way a clerk might treat me or how my husband or children perceive what I'm saying. Proverbs 15:30 says, "A cheerful look brings joy to the heart" My mom used to sing a song to my sister and I sometimes in the mornings that went like this, "Good morning to you, good morning to you, we're all in our places, with sunshiny faces, and this is the way, to start a new day!"

pretty is . . . a smiley face!

Pretty is a Pear

Every morning, since May, when I look out my bathroom window the first thing I see is my neighbors pear tree. I was amazed in the beginning to see how tiny and yet perfectly shaped each little pear was.

Now I can hardly wait til they are ripe and ready to eat! The truth of the matter is I never even ate pears until last years harvest and I just couldn't help myself from loving something that I had seen grow with my very own eyes.

Growing up on a farm in Arkansas I don't think I ever really appreciated all the green beans I had to snap and all the peas I had to shuck so that my mother could can them for the winter. I now have a better understanding of the joy she must have felt at seeing what God can create from a seed, some water and the sun :)

Pretty is a Pear.