Quiet

Welcome, January. Welcome, 2020. Welcome, new year.

It has been quite the January, so far. We had a lovely Christmas. And then we came home and had sickness. The kind of sickness where everyone is down for a week with fever and chills and aches and colds. And we've overlapped somewhat but it has really been a long drawn-out affair, which has launched 2020 as one of the most remarkably stay-at-home, relaxing years. I'd like to focus on the scent of homemade brown bread wafting through the house, the hours and hours of reading stories (welcome to the Melendy quartet) together as a family and playing game after game of Cover Your Donkey (as Sasha likes to call it).

Slow waltz. That's us, foggy-brained, hoarse-voiced, each at our own pace of rest and relaxation.

And lest we forget to impart important details, we must add that we've had very little school and many days of -50ish windchill. A walk across the yard holds coughing fits and chilled fingers.

And then the day that Pat felt himself getting progressively worse and joining the ranks of sick, Zach played hockey and scored a ten-stitch scar on his temple. It was late in the evening. Those things always make all-night ER trips. Colby came with me to bring him in and the wait was phenomenally long. I found out later they were keeping him for a six-hour watch because it was a head trauma. When it was finally time for stitches I fled the room, Colby fled the room and the doctor had to get Zach to press the call button for help because she had a surface bleed which filled his ear and sprayed her shirt. We came home in the wee hours, relieved, exhausted, and one with a serious headache.

We have so much to be grateful for.

Back to my word. Quiet. I'm in a writing group with three lovely ladies and our topic for January was 'your word for the year'. I pondered and thought. Self-denial? Most definitely needed. Joy? That's what I want. Hope? Always. I had this idea going through my mind. I've been on this journey for a while now of deepening/strengthening/growing in self-denial and quietness. When Karen suggested quiet I knew that explained what I was trying to say. The word quiet can have so much more self-denial and grace than the word self-denial. And quiet to me means a quiet heart, a quiet spirit but not necessarily being quiet and not saying anything, which for me could be more rebellious than anything.

Quiet.

So beautiful; like the snow-flakes drifting down outside my window, like the sound of my little boy breathing hard as he sleeps his fever and sore throat away, like the concentration on Zach's face as he does one more lesson in math.

Quiet.

So self-denied; like the man of the house arising early and heading out the door on the coldest day of the year, operating at 70% as he quietly stated to me, willing to give anything for his family.

Quiet.

So gifted. So humble. So gracious. Like our teachers at school, giving their time and selves again and again and again.

I want to be this.

I long to grow in Jesus, in quietness and in strength. For in quietness and confidence shall be your strength.