Natural Journal

"We are all meant to be naturalists, each in his degree, and it is inexcusable to live in a world so filled with the marvels of plant and animal life and care nothing for these things." -Charlotte Mason

I am going to try keeping a nature journal. Again.  

It just feels like the right thing to do to steward the gift I have been given in this new home and try and express my gratitude to God for being surrounded by so much beauty.  

I have only found time to sit and sketch and write two entries so far. But if we live here for as long as I imagine we will, I am bound to have a decent journal if I am consistent over years.  

I am critical of my work, even in pain as I draw, because I am not capable of making the beauty I want to make, but I am following the advice I give my students and my children, and I am doing it anyway.  

The only wrong drawing would be the one I do not even attempt for fear of failure or for pride. To quote another person whose writings have influenced me, G.K. Chesterton once said, "Anything worth doing is worth doing badly." 

God has given me new inspiration in this place, so different than my last home where my only tree that brought any birds grew sick and died.  Now I live in a forest! Imagine it! I can hear the birds arriving outside even now, pouring in from all sides. 

So I look for the means to increase my capacity to appreciate so much delight and I begin again, adding to a journal I started a few years ago that I thought I might never have the heart to come back to.  But God makes all things new and is faithful to continue every good work He begins in us. 

Our First Snow

We had our first real snow in the new house. 

We built a snowman and tried out the sledding down our driveway and all the different inclines in our yard. There is not one single place to just let the kids go.  So Norah and I took the little girls down in turns, because she and I can steer and stop whenever necessary.

We went for a little walk to the creek and we admired the various winter scenes.  Norah enjoyed blowing on snow-covered lichen and watching the snow melt off. "It's like spring happening in a time elapsed video," Norah said. And it was. 

The girls also enjoyed dropping snow balls into the stream and watching them soak up water.  

We came back to the house after what seemed like hours. We we're all muscle and bone tired, and very hungry.  I had been tending to dinner on and off all afternoon, so it was ready in a few minutes.  

Now we are all fed, and dry and warm. The girls are playing quietly nearby as I type this and notice how very sore I am as I continue to yawn.  It's time to curl up in bed and hope I can keep my eyes open to finish the last part of "Words of Radiance" by Brandon Sanderson.  

 

My New Spot

This is my favorite spot in our new house so far.  Isn't it lovely?  I took this photo shortly after we started our first fire in the upstairs fire place.

Pine Trees and Unspeakable Joy

I had two prophetic dreams about this move. In one of the dreams, I was dancing through Connecticut's countryside in worship. As I finished my dance, I bowed to Lord, then I came up from the bow to find myself in a new home. ??! (At the time, we were not even contemplating a move and so the dream did not seem to make sense.)

But, there were things about the dream, symbols, that I noticed.  For instance, there were pine trees outside the window and pine cones and needles all over the ground, things like that. But, the thing I remember most was that in that house, I felt the most unspeakable joy.

My rational mind struggles with supernatural experiences like this, but the memory is so real to me, the joy was so potent, that I can bring it back to me if I concentrate. I can remember it better than any real memories I have of things that happened to me during my waking hours.

These powerful dreams have served me in a few ways through the last few months.  They brought me the motivation to continue through the sometimes grueling process of looking for a new home, even though we weren't ever really that eager to move.

The dreams also comforted me as I packed and grieved, because I was leaving a place in this world that I cherished.

Now the dreams often bring me excitement as I unpack and discover things about our new place.

So when I saw a Christmas ornament with pine branches and pine needles, my eyes were drawn to it and I thought of my dream again. That ornament was in a pair with the ornament shown in the picture above. When I saw the word, "Joy," on the side of it, I just smiled and decided that I had to buy these ornaments for my tree this year.

Near those ornaments were others, too, that made me think of my new home: a swede cardinal, wooden binoculars, a wooden camera, a flannel backpack, and a wooden doll, all bundled up in miniature clothes against the cold, sitting on a tiny, metal snow sled: all things that remind me of our new home this winter, surrounded by trees, birds, hills, within minutes of hiking trails.  I know these ornaments will serve to remind me of this significant move year after year and seeing them throughout the day already serves to bring that same joy, unspeakable, and full of glory, right back to the surface.

Stewardship, Relationships, and Experiences

A few mornings before we moved, Dwayne sat down with me and said something like, "We should think about what we want to do with this house, what it will be for, what we want the new house to mean." 

He does this at work, leading teams of people to consider their purposes and goals and families need to do the same thing sometimes.  He said he had a few ideas, but wanted to hear my mind about it.  

Within three minutes, we had decided on the three things we knew this house would be for!   The words in his head were the same exact words in mine! We were totally in sync and I just knew it was because God was leading us by His Spirit.  As well-suited as Dwayne and I are for one another, we don't often agree that perfectly. The three words we agree upon were:

Stewardship: because God was giving us something simply bigger than we had before and we knew we would have to grow in order to care for it as well as we should.  And because a big part of my job as a homeschool mom is to teach my kids how to live real life from making their own breakfasts, and perhaps more importantly, cleaning up their own breakfast messes, to organizing their days to accommodate all the work they are responsible for at that time in their learning journey and then to leave room for all the rest of life they want to live. Stewardship was the right word to express all that. 

Relationships:  because our number one, main reason for moving was to shorten Dwayne's commute and make more time together, so our marriage will be stronger, and Dwayne will have more time with our kids.  Our family will also be moving to the Danbury area soon. Relationships with Dwayne's brother, my sister-in-law, and my nieces and nephews who are coming here are the close second reason why we relocated. People are the most precious thing. Relationships with family and friends and God Himself are the main reason behind everything we do. I think relationships, with God and with other people, are the main reason we even exist on this planet. One catechism says we exist "to know God and enjoy Him forever."  So God must have people He wants us to meet and friendships He wants us to grow in and around Redding that our place in Waterbury would not facilitate. So relationships was another obvious choice for us!  

And Experiences: because our children will actually grow up here, and most of their childhood experiences will be in this place now.  And my oldest is just old enough to start youth group. The timing of that is not lost on me. Knowing how youth group events shaped my life, God must have plans for her here.  And we've got windows that allow nature to interrupt us all day long and miles of trails right outside our front door.  To me, that's God's way of saying, "Pst! Come see this!" or "Get your shoes on. Let's go for a walk."  That will mean changing my homeschool style to accommodate more nature study and my workout schedule to accommodate all the time my legs and heart and lunges will spend hiking. Homeschool and exercise are two of the things I thought I had perfected, basically. Ha! God likes to humble me. So changing my "perfect" plans will be necessary joy, because we do intend to experience all the truth, goodness, and beauty God has in store for us here.

Our New Home

We have moved to our new home in Redding and we are busy settling in.  We've been working non-stop for over a week! We get up, sit and have a cup of coffee (or two), and then we work all day until past bedtime.

Dwayne is enjoying his much, much shorter commute to work every day.  But before and after work and sometimes during the day, he is working to get us settled, too. Today, for instance, he will take a final load to the town dump on his lunch hour.

The only respites we get, if you can call them respites, are when we get to go outside and rake leaves or trim thorny branches to tend to our property.  Then we will take a half hour and go explore the land around our home.

We are delighted with every little mushroom, every interesting bump on trees, every bright clump of green moss. We are constantly explaining, "Oh!" and "Wow! Come see this!" Our spirits are soaking up the beauty of nature and we are thanking God for such a gift in this home.

And it isn't just the land. The home itself is just right for us.  It's dated, but in a way we actually like.  I am enjoying more square footage, especially in closet space. There are whole closets I haven't used yet.  The hallways are wider and that didn't seem like it would matter, but it feels amazing, kind of like pulling on your smallest jeans and having room in them, because your diet is really working.  Now we have a two car garage and we both park inside. And we have two, that's right, two fire places and we are plotting where to move the rocks in the yard for another fire pit outside.

We probably have another week of work, but the end is coming into sight. There are only a few boxes left in each room, only a few piles here and there, and only a few surfaces that remained to be cleaned.  But, of course, "the end" of this move is really just the beginning. Isn't it?  We will have to paint and make curtains and all that.  My room is a bright pink that I do not enjoy. And the girls' room is a bright blue, but they'd rather have it pink. And there are bigger home-improvement projects that will need to happen, eventually. But, thankfully, the house was in "move-in condition" and we are able to simply dump, donate, or situate the things we are keeping and start really living.

And while I will probably enjoy making this space more and more my own with wall colors and curtains, those things aren't really the stuff of life, are they? Soon, the real life God means for us to live here will begin. What will we learn here? I wonder. What will we do? Who will we meet?  Those are the things I look forward to the most. So I quickly unpack to get this place functional in order to support all the real life that is about to begin.