Eyes Wide Open

~ frosty flowers, dusted in crystals

~ making (and yes, eating) florescent marbled leaves

~ Rabbit Breeders of America hats made for old folks and discarded at the salvation army just exactly for MY boy.  

~ 11 year olds who wear said hats with pride.

~ the spills and scatters of an almost two year old

~ the many helping hands that help me clean up said messes

~ vibrant (and delicious) french bread pizza

~ crafty happenings in the Spare Oom,  glorious disasters everywhere!  

~ fresh and warm pretzels

~ honey mustard, heavy on the honey

~ the girl who loves chickens.  This summer, if she tottered outside when the door was open (when was it closed?!?) I knew it was probably to go see the chickens.  She is already missing those trips to 'her chicken stairs'.

~ My three Rosie the Riveters, me still my heart.

~ A week of feasting and birthdays and family and friends.

~ hand me down quilted black fabric and fur balls boughten for pennies after Christmas last year.  (I believe they were called 'vase fillers'?!?!?  Who would fill a vase with furballs, I wonder? )  A warm little hat for a dear girl that looks slightly ridiculous on.  But babies look even cuter in slightly ridiculous things.

 ~ notes from a girl who is old enough to understand and compassionate enough to take action when she overhears a Mama sigh to herself at the end of a looooooong day of doing and mutter "Did I accomplish ANYTHING I wanted to get done today at all?  I don't think I did..."

~ that girls' heart

This life is wildly full and wonderfully hard and simply sweet.  It is crazy good.

I love Thanksgiving because this is the holiday that can't get justified out in glitz or Christmas lights or Easter egg hunts or crazy costumes or reindeer or jolly old elves.  A turkey is a turkey and a feast is a feast but everyone who ever proclaimed GRATITUDE is proclaiming God as creator, maybe even without them knowing it.

No one can be grateful to anything or anyone if life is just one big cosmic accident: time and chance acting on matter over the course of billions of years. Random.  Chaos.  We are all just matter in motion.  When they say "I'm thankful for..."  you just can't be thankful for random chaos, time and chance.  Anyone sitting down at a feast and feeling grateful or having a moment of sheer delight in the world and feeling content...anyone with thankfulness beginning to creep up and out this week...is acting like a CHRISTIAN.  They are declaring the glory of the Lord, just like the heavens and the sea, and marveling at His goodness.

For that and many, many more wonderful and blessed ironies, I give thanks.

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you folks who have stuck by my long-winded and photo-heavy rants, even as they have been coming fewer and further between lately.   

I am grateful for this space, for the listening and encouraging ones that come out from behind the screen and the people who help me to really see.