My beautiful gifts...

The other day, in our Lazarus Experiment, we were challenged to stop and listen to what was around us. Try and take notice of the sounds that we may not really hear on a daily basis. Because I usually spend my mornings reading on the front porch, I know that the birds are out singing their songs. A couple days ago, the day of the challenge, I stopped to do what we had been challenged. I just felt like I would like to share what I did.

I have just spent the better part of two hours on my porch, reading, thinking, listening and watching. I have a bird feeder on my porch that I just filled again this morning and waiting quietly for the birds to appear to feast.

And appear they did. Cardinals, finches, mockingbirds, robins, tiny wrens, and more all joining together in the large willow oak that stands just outside my front door with a canopy of lush green leaves that envelopes the little world that lives just inside it's branches. It's a little world most people wouldn't even stop to recognize. It's beautiful music, so unwritten, so random and yet so perfect plays from different branches, all separate pieces of the same orchestral piece. They are small, and large, these little instruments. They sing beautifully knowing that God does indeed enjoy their joyful noise.

I watched as the mockingbirds played among the tall weeds that seem to have grown in my yard over night. I see the squirrels hoping together, playing hide and seek, and cheerful games of "Tag!". Even the locust are not out in full force this time of day but their own melodies play off in the distance.

God has made a wonderful world. It's beautiful can be so overwhelming. As overwhelming as our own sadness can be. I am so grateful.

Despite my broken body, the pain I walk with daily; despite my recent heartache, I am grateful for this respite in my front yard. I am so thankful that this little world exists just outside my front door reminding me that even in my despair the beauty of His world is far greater than me or my troubles.

I took time to sit in the all the noise and reverie of the morning to relax. Thankful to God that I can still feel His love, His world, His beauty and His gifts. They somehow make my heart lighter. They make my joints feel like simple growing pains, much like the springing of a new limb from this massive tree. I am thankful that the world I live in, sometimes so overwhelmingly filled with it's pain, frustration, anger, angst, fear and rage we can still find the joy and happiness and peace that only He can give us.