Light in My Heart

“What are you celebrating?” 

“Being alive.”

“You were that sick?”

“It has nothing to do with being sick.  We breathe…  we run around…go to the store…dig up the tulip bulbs…make soup…pay the electric bill, and we never stop to think – we’re alive! This is a gift! 

“I wasn’t even pondering this.  I wasn’t being poetic or introspective. It’s just that I glanced at the floor – right there – this afternoon and saw how the light came through the window and fell on the wood.  It bowled me over.  It took my breath away.  I could hardly bear it.”

He was silent, looking at her.

“There was so much life in the light on the wood, the way it folded itself gently into the grain.  That little spot on the floor just radiated with tenderness.  And then it was gone.

“Do you know?” she asked softly.

“I know,” he said.

“Not everyone knows,” she said.

“Yes.”

– Jan Karon, A Light in the Window

Do you know?

Yes…I know, too, I whisper.   Sitting in my home today, it seems…as I look for it…I find His tender prints of wonder everywhere.

I hear his gentle laughter in the chimes playing with the snowflake breeze out on my porch. “Their music reminds me of angel songs,” the clerk told me when she sold them to me last spring.  “Me, too,” I think.  And of ship bells in a harbor… church chimes in a tower… and  hour bells counting out time on an old fashioned mantel clock…

My heart catches as I walk into my little cottage kitchen* just in time to see momentary sun send gleaming light skittering across the white subway tiles…   O how I love the clean, bright feeling of this room with its four glass-front cabinets… blue, white and green accents…warm hickory floor.  The white bead board and molding design I talked the contractor into creating halfway up the walls…  And I remember Ms. Karon’s words that could have been written just…for… me…in this moment – That little spot on the floor just radiated with tenderness...

Then, gazing out my front room windows in the teasing, soul-fleeting sun, I find shadows of tree branches gracefully silhouetted there on the siding canvas of neighboring homes… like a signature  on the Artist’s paintings.  And light rimming and etching the edges of tree trunks bending across the way… making me draw their lovely patterns in my mind, as if on paper…

And later… as snow comes softly to my neighborhood once more… it reminds me of manna, dropping from heaven and into my heart, a breath of promise…

That…

He has all my needs taken care of…even, especially, when I can’t see.  Day by day, He is holding me in His gracious hand of favor… encouraging me to blow my worries and fears and doubts about here and now, the future, into the breeze.  Like blowing on a thistle, and watching all that — fluff — disappear.  Putting my hand in His and feeling his warm assurance falling on my upturned face…

“Do you really know?”  He asks, tenderly.  

Tears star my eyes.  It’s so hard.  This not knowing what or when or how.  But I feel His smile, hear his words inside me.

“Yes,” I answer.

“Not everyone does.”

“Yes.”  I think I feel His sadness, sharp and deep.

 “Will you share it?”

“Yes!” I promise, as He lights my heart with…joy.

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© Pam Depoyan

*  Just so you know… my real kitchen is nowhere near as beauteous as these photos, though I think for it’s size, limited budget…maybe, I’ve created a bit of this ambiance… Still, a girl can dream… 🙂

Have you found some wonder today? 

Will you share it? 🙂

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                          I’m linking this post with with Bonnie at Faith Barista, answering                     “Share your thoughts on the One Word: Joy”

and many months later, now summer, I’m linking to Playdates with God, for a little refreshing from July heat…and because this is one of my favorite moments with Him 🙂

and Imperfect Prose  at Emily Wierenga’s place