Settling In

It's been just about a month now and I think we're starting to feel comfortable here.  Reason's classes have started, so he's settling into a routine of buses, classes, studying, and reading.  He loves it.  Not, of course, that there was any doubt there whatsoever.  It's just that, for months (years?) we've swung between "This is definitely going to be do-able" and "School?  And marriage?  I don't think I can handle that."  Now that we're here, it seems like it's in the "this is going to be do-able" category, for which I am most grateful.

While Reason has been busy with that, I've kept myself occupied with Very Important Things like watering my basil plant, having an afternoon iced coffee, and reading on the balcony.  Oh, and doing the laundry, emptying the dishwasher, making granola, making dishwasher soap, trying a new bread recipe (which I will share soon), figuring out where to go grocery shopping, finding pointless roads, making guacamole without a spice packet, chatting with VA friends, shopping for a bridesmaids dress, and hanging out with my sister in law.

I've also recently rediscovered how much I like reading.  I found a beloved-but-forgotten book on my bookshelf last week.  Or, rather, it found me.  Because I'm quite sure that it was calling to me from the shelf.  Upon opening up the well-worn paperback, I remembered that this book has always been dear to me when life is in transition.  It's called Until the Day Breaks by Patricia St John and is a biography of Lilias Trotter, missionary to Muslims in Algeria.  Lilias has a beautiful way with words and a spiritual insight that I long for.  Here, listen to her own words:

"I have just found out that the bride's words in the Song of Solomon, 'the rose of Sharon', are rendered in the Revised 'the autumn crocus'.  It is the snowdrop, as it were, of these lands, breaking out of the hard, dry ground and laughing at the barrenness of everything around in its faith that the rains are coming, when there is as yet not a cloud to be seen.  Such a picture of the church of the Firstborn." 


"'It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait.'  I never saw, till recently, how that word 'both' exactly strikes the balance so needed in Muslim work.  Some of us rush ahead with our hopes and are down-hearted when they crumble, having never learned to quietly wait.  Others go on quietly waiting for a lifetime, without much of the spring of hope anywhere; both hope and wait... in quietness and confidence; that is the answer."


Isn't it beautiful?