Beautiful Morning

Sun to the south hitting the bare white branches hard against the charcoal gray clouds hovering in the north. Love that sight. I was swept up in it this morning as I drove home from dropping off the boys at school. That dark cloud started throwing down tiny white pellets of snow as I got closer to home.

How does white snow fall from black clouds?

It felt like a new day. Not just another day, but a new day. A day to see things better. A day to finish what was unfinished. A day to conquer and stand up to the piles of overwhelming good things and bring them down to a filtered form of themselves that is so much smaller, and gleams in the wonder of best.

I needed a new day today.

I won’t go into my week, I will only say that my bones have been distractingly sore.

But this…

“Gracious words are a honeycomb,
sweet to the soul and healing to the bones.” Proverbs 16:24 (NIV)

Owen read that to me this morning, all curled up in his favorite red fuzzy blanket on the couch. I laid on the floor beneath the kaleidoscope of a quilt made from my great-grandmother’s hand stitched triangles and squares of cotton. Heating pad beneath my back and feet propped up on the seat of the couch. Remarkably comfortable on a cold morning.

Gracious words will heal these bones I thought…but I can’t force people to give me gracious words. This is a prescription I can’t fill.

Yet, I can at least give them. Why not? I packed lunches and directed breakfast. I instructed, motivated and hurried little boys to school, “let’s leave early and drive slow so we don’t slide on the ice,” I said.

Then on the way I told them how well they would do. I told them how much I love them and how dear they are to me. I prayed for them to be helping and inspiring. I prayed over their spelling words and their Bible tests. I prayed. And Gracious words were pouring out in and around my world.

My bones are still sore, but I know that gracious words do quiet work. Words of forgiveness, gratitude, joy, reverence and peace are warming my tired flesh and creating harmony in all that God created in me.

Sometimes the prescription we need is in our own mouth. Our healing is often a Truth that needs utterance and our joy looks up to find the sun beating hard on bone white branches against the overwhelming charcoal gray. No matter how dark the clouds, the light finds a way to show me beauty and wonder of wonders, white snowflakes continue to fall from black clouds.