Mondays are for counting thanks to 1000 and beyond…
While I love Seattle, I need to get out of the city every so often to a place with more grass than concrete and more birds than cars. My ears long to escape from city sounds and I want to smell the earth and trees and sea. A couple months ago I had a talk with God about it. Not being a driver, leaving the city (and public transit) behind requires a little more planning, and I’ve loved seeing how God has been working things out without me thrashing about trying to orchestrate it. He’s been teaching me trust and patience–inviting me to tell him what I need, then step back and see what happens.
392. On Friday I leave for the high school mission trip. Leave may not be the right word since the students will be staying in Seattle for the week working with, mostly, inner city ministries. When I said yes to helping out, I knew that this was not going to be one of those times to get out of the city, but I felt both a call and joyful excitement to be involved no matter what.
Without my saying anything to anyone, I was placed with the team of students going to Tierra Nueva, a ministry reaching out to migrant farmers, 90 minutes outside of Seattle. Most of the week will be spent working on the farm there. I am thrilled!
393. An wonderful invitation to spend some writing time in a rural house on the peninsula.
394. The gift of a pile of beautiful garden magazines.
395. A lovely day at the Nisqually Estuary with friends, seeing so many different kinds of birds.
(for more photos of the wildlife refuge, look here.)
396. A balcony sanctuary, where I can listen to the mingled sounds of city and nature.
397. A spontaneous day in Bellingham and journaling time on a rock at Larrabee State Park.
“If I spend too much time in these wild places, I will shed the trappings of what I wear in the city and slowly meld into the rock, and sea, and woods. These words even now are full of the waves and foam and splash, no longer empty, no longer easily erased. Words written on my heart.”
398. Pots of growing things now blooming.
And while not about getting out of the city, two more amazingly wonderful answers to prayer:
399. The long-term loan of a piano keyboard from my friends Cathee and Brian.
400. Fifty one pages done toward my dissertation first draft, and no more anxiety as I write.
