"A living, loving God can and does make His presence felt, can and does speak to us in the silence of our hearts, can and does warm and caress us until we no longer doubt that He is near, that He is here." - Brennan Manning
I stepped outside last night into the warm, dark air and took a walk to a park near the fields where I go running. It was late, I was in my pajamas, and the town was quiet. Peace was an automatic occurrence. I sat down on the swing and let Jesus sweep me away. We spent precious one on one time with each other. We shared closeness, intimacy, laughter, tears, and words. In earthly relationships, we find ourselves investing large amounts of our time with other people, other activities, other duties, all of these things a blessing to share in together. But it is absolutely vital to take time together with your other half. Alone. No one else, no duties, nothing but your unity. How much more than should our time with Jesus be, as the ultimate relation in our soul!!! Let us spend our time on this mist of an earth at the foot of the cross with the blood pouring over our bitter souls and spreading sweetness through our veins, providing grace and freedom.
Jojo and I have been taking walks or bike rides to get ice cream the past few weeks. It has provided precious time for us to spend together. She takes my hand and just talks. About any and everything. We laugh and joke together, we talk about animals, we talk about boys, we talk about how flowers grow and the different colors in the wings of the ducks as we walk by the pond in Wegberg. She loves learning. She plays piano every time she walks into the dining room. She asks me to sing her to sleep. She reads me German stories at bedtime so I can learn her language. We spent an hour in her room cutting the hair of every single Barbie she owns as well as all her horses. We played Monopoly and I was so bad that she began to pay me when I landed on her property. I taught her "cat's cradle" and now she has dubbed it "3 fingers" so whenever she needs to do homework she instead yells out, "Karly, 3 fingers!!!" We spend endless amounts of time outside with her bunnies. One day when we were cleaning out the cage she looked up at me with her shovel and garbage bag and said, "Well, they poop and they eat. These are my bunnies." Then she heaved her shoulders in a sigh and continued her shoveling. I treasure her! She sits on my lap, squeezes my hand, jumps on my shoulder from the stairway, messes up my hair, and tickles me under the ribs. She loves red jelly beans. Almost every day she will grab the jelly bean duck my Grandma gave me and search and search until she finds red. She insists that I tell her the name of every flavor and then screws up her nose at them. She will give me kisses once in a while, and she says she loves me before falling asleep, but the sweetest things to me so far happened last week. She grabbed me in a hug before I left for the weekend, pulled me down to her and gave me a big kiss smack on the lips. Now, before you think about how strange that is, read further. Every evening at dinner time she goes around the table and gives endless kisses and hugs to her mom and dad. I never grew up kissing my parents on the lips, but I guess it's normal here! Or at least to them. Needless to say, I found myself smiling as I walked away and that smile turned into a hop, skip and a jump! and a laugh! And yes, I just wrote an entire paragraph about one little girl. The little girl that has poured sunshine into my heart!
