When I peered out of the window yesterday morning, I was mildly surprised to discover it was snowing.  I say mildly, because though I had no expectation of a white Easter, the weather in Colorado is quite the unexpected adventure =).

As we drove to church, I watched the huge flakes falling and instead of being put out by the snowy morning, thought about it being a perfect way for God to remind me that though my sins were as scarlet, He has washed them white as snow.  Of course that was all before we drove up to my parent’s home in the Black Forest and our van decided it was not as blessed by the frosty flurries and promptly got stuck in them.

There we were at the end of my parent’s street, my sister waving at us from inside her equally stuck vehicle, where we spent the next thirty minutes alternately reversing and digging the van out of the snow.  I felt helpless sitting in there with the kids watching my dad and Aaron out there with the shovels, but I made up for it later.  We were finally able to clear enough room to get the van on the side of the road, out of the way of oncoming traffic.

A lovely task awaited us once we’d parked…getting everything we’d brought with us from the van into the house.  I grabbed two little suitcases in one hand and in the other helped Nathaniel carry a loaded laundry basket up the street and up the long, somewhat steep driveway.  I’m a little cautious to admit this, as it reveals how out of shape I am, but it took a few hours before the muscles in my arms stopped shaking from lugging all of that stuff in.  Grateful that we’d brought everything we would need to stay the night, we settled in for the long haul and enjoyed our afternoon and evening, allowing the stress of what had happened to melt away as the minutes ticked by.

First thing this morning when I awoke, a line from a song popped into my head.  I cannot remember the song title, or who sings the ballad, but the lyrics were clear as anything:  You make all things new.  Thinking about our day yesterday and more specifically the Resurrection we celebrated, I was struck with the truth of that statement.  He does make all things new.  Two thousand years ago when He gave His life for mine, He gave me the chance to experience new life and forgiveness in Him.  Yesterday, our morning started with beauty, moved on to frustration, but today we have been given another day where He has made all things new.  And when the snow melts and we begin glimpsing the beginnings of spring that are growing more prevalent each day, I will again be reminded of how He makes all things new.

When you stop to chew on that, it is staggering in both its simplicity and complexity.  He makes all things new.

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We are in the midst of potty training our youngest child (woo hoo, almost done with diapers!!), which has brought life as we knew it to a halt.  We hardly remember we have an upper level in our house and oh, is that a basement down those dark stairs??  Our entire life has been compressed into our kitchen where “accidents” are much easier to clean up.

Needless to say, I am grateful that our kitchen is not like all the others we’ve had here in Colorado, a narrow little hallway barely large enough for Aaron and I to pass each other.  What a miserable little life we’d be living right now if that were the case =(~.

Living in the kitchen for the last week, so to speak, has made me think of those pioneer women whose entire home was probably close to the size of the room where I cook.  They spent much of their day in that same location and if the weather was bad (like it is here today), all of their kids were probably there with them.  I can just imagine the little ones playing in the dirt on the floor, like my little two (minus the dirt…I think).  The older ones working on arithmetic and writing with sighs of exasperation in between.

I have a great amount of respect for those women who went before us to give us the kind of life we enjoy.  I think of all they were called to do: leaving a life of comfort and family, following a man with a dream, trekking across vast and frightening portions of a country over trails few had traversed to face the unknown, dealing with pain and hardship, the likes we know nothing of.  They made their home in a new land, in a wild territory wondering if it would ever be tamed.

I have a dishwasher, washer and dryer for my laundry, I have a bread maker to make bread or I just buy it at the grocery store.  I drive a comfortable van and can turn the radio up in order to not hear the kids bickering in the backseat.  I am not cut from the same cloth as those women who tamed this feral terrain.  I look up to them in wonder at their courage and strength.

But…I do wonder sometimes, about the things God asks of me.    He often asks me to embrace something new that frightens me, to wade across the shores of wifering (my own new word =) ) and mothering not knowing what the end result will be.  And many, many times, He has lovingly led me from a place of comfort into foreign soil.  Soil I was sure would always be an out-of-hand mess and untameable.  It has always been in those rough and unruly places where He has met me and I’ve seen Him anew.

I’m a human, an American to boot, which means that a great part of me prefers a life of ease.  But I would not trade those wild lands where God’s nearness is almost palpable for a life of greatest comfort and wealth.

So, maybe I’m a pioneer woman at heart.  I guess I’ll never really know =).

On Tuesday, we took a brief hiatus from our normal school activities so the kids could watch history in the making.  None of them have seen an inauguration before, so it was very educational =).

If you’re expecting to read an Obama Bashing, you’ll have to go somewhere else.  If you were hoping to view an Obama Praising, you’ll have to travel elsewhere for that too.  I want to focus on the people who were present at the occasion.  As Obama walked in, you could feel the excitement tingling through the audience, hands were raised, tears coursed down cheeks, shouts of adoration could be heard.

Adoration.  Humans are made to worship.  God instilled that quality within us; the ability to love, to adore.  The bottom line is that if we’re not worshiping the King of kings, we will quickly find something else to put on the throne of our hearts…like the President of the United States.

If you take a look around, you will see how avidly we worship.  People worship cars, houses, spouses, kids, creation, actors, singers, athletes, leaders.  We worship ourselves too.  We spend a lot of time bowing down before stuff that will pass away, prostrating ourselves before other people who will ultimately fail us.

As I watched that crowd responding to Obama, my heart began to grieve for the dangers of worshipping a mere man.  At one of our lowest points, America is reaching her arms out, begging to be restored.  Our people are looking to Obama for salvation from our troubles, hope for our future.

Whether or not you support Obama is reallly rather immaterial.  You might not be one of his worshippers, instead you may be one of those that is wringing their hands wondering how on earth God could let this man become president.  There is one solution for the two sides of this coin and I offer it to you now:

Some trust in chariots and some in horses (some in presidents…Ralina’s version =) ), but we trust in the name of the Lord our God.  They are brought to their knees and fall, but we rise up and stand firm.  Psalm 20:7,8

Where is your hope?  In the President?  Our country?  In yourself?  If so, you may as well give way to discouragement now, for your hopes will surely be dashed and crushed.  But if our hope is in Christ then we will not buckle when men fail us, we will not be swayed when our country falls, because our Hope remains the same.  He is strong, steadfast, all-powerful.  We have nothing to fear.  To Him belongs our undying devotion.

Our previous pastor used to like to say that there are no lone rangers in the kingdom of God.  I knew what he was trying to communicate, but it made me bristle nonetheless.  I’ve always liked being a lone ranger.  Isolation or being an island is not something that scares or overwhelms me.  There is a certain comfort, if you will, of not been tied too intricately to too many people.

In 2008, God decided to show me, his happy little lone ranger, a thing or two about people…about relationships.  From the beginning of the year to the end, circumstance after circumstance occurred where I found that there was an actual need for relationship.  As I’ve continued to study His Word and peel back new layers, I’ve been discovering just how precious God considers people to be and how integral He desires us to be connected together.  This can really be a most uncomfortable concept.  As the threads of our lives began to weave together with others, life can get stickier, messier, more painful,…and much richer.

The last months have brought a parade of lovely people into my life individually and into our lives as a family.  I have found myself actually looking forward to going to work where I know I will get to see some of these special people, or praying more often for the individuals at church (or lots of other places) whose needs have tugged at my heartstrings, or craved time with friends and family who have been a part of me for a very long time already (and have proven their worth by sticking around!).  I have longed for, more and more, to create deeper bonds with Aaron and our beautiful babies.

With sharper vision, I’ve been seeing the unique value of new relationships; with heartfelt stirrings, experienced the priceless treasure of mature friendships.  God has indeed created humans to connect with one another.  Elementary, dear Ralina, I know, but the fact that I am really starting to grasp this and even appreciate it is frankly, something quite new and almost awe-inspiring.

So, while the vision of the Lone Ranger galloping across the plains still beckons to my love affair with isolation, a new image is surfacing.  Even the Lone Ranger didn’t always ride alone (or maybe he never did, I wasn’t a fan of the old show =) ), he was accompanied by Tonto or Squanto, or whatever his name was, his faithful sidekick.  I guess we really do all need sidekicks or need to be one of the faithful ones surrounding others.  God designed it and even the Lone Ranger knew it =).