S.A.D.

in the summer time, when the sun is so bright, you have to have on shades before you go out into it, and and when it's so hot eggs can be fried on the car top and old people die in their stuffy apartments and people leave mean notes on windshields if the car windows aren't down when a dog is inside.  when the best idea for spending a day is to steep in a pool of chemically enhanced water with about 150 other practically naked people who seem to constantly be bumping into you.  when all the kids that live within 5 miles i think have to all be in my yard.  in the summer time, i am happy.  now, not so much.  now, when i must keep every body part covered with warmers woven out of yarn.  now, when i can't hardly be spotted without my tattered blue robe snuggly tied around my middle.  now when all i wanna do is eat chocolate cake and brownies and oreos and chili with fritos and cheese and sour cream.  now, when i peer out my window and hope for a glimpse of my awe striking summer sky, but instead only see the grey expanse and the brown grass and skeleton trees and eerily still yards.  its these days that i dont go out to the barn to visit my horses, that i dont lay in the grass and snuggle my dogs. these days i dont take cupcakes to my neighbors or rally up my girlfriends for a day trip to kalamazoo.  these days when i really could care less about the laundry or if my hair is clean.  the grill is quiet and cold, the meat i prepare for supper on these days is just thrown in the oven or mixed up in a dish with creamy soup and stove top.  im not really sure how it gets this way or why it has to be so different.  but it is.
i've heard a couple different attempts at diagnosis for my winter pout.  there is this thing called "seasonal affective disorder".  it so appropriately carries itself on it's initials... S.A.D.  funny.  do you know that researchers believe that people that are SAD have a sensitivity to light and the absence of that said light plunges them into winter depression?  and how about this, the light that is most critical for the SADs to get is the morning light.  you know that kind. the kind that streams through your bedroom window in the morning in july that seems to sprinkle happy on your eyelids practically forcing them to pop open.  apparently we have this internal clock, some scientist or doctor or person who went to school for a really long time to become very smart and gets to label our selves with wierd names, says that people have what's called a "circadian clock".  that said gloriously beaming morning sun apparently resets our clock, allowing us to wake up happy, refreshed, and not SAD. so, in the winter time, when the sun likes to sleep in thus forcing the human race to have to pry themselves out of bed in the sleepy dark morning, our circus clocks or whatever are forgotten and not reset and we are doomed to live out the days in agony. 
well that's stupid.  i'm not sure who made up SAD, or who looked in my body cavities and saw my clock, or really, i dont even care who the wise old wizard is that makes us have to change the time around like wierdos.  i am probably just not going to claim this said SAD for myself. heres why.
if i look above and see what i am NOT doing during the winter time, i can pretty much see why i am a pitiful, sad (the regular sad, not the seasonal sad), miserable, confused mess. where's the love? where did it go?  i LOVE my barn. when we came to look at our house to consider purchase, it was locked, so we looked in the barn. we decided right then and there to buy the house, who cares what's behind that door, LOOK at this barn!!!!!  i LOVE my horses. i love how they smell, i love how their noses feel like cold velvet and i love that they let me rub that velvet and they let me even press my cheek against them and they dont bite my face off. i love how even though they weigh like 1, 476 pounds, they look like delicate ballerinas as they prance around the field on their dainty hoofs.  i love how they make me feel small while i cling to their necks and i love how free i feel when i am on their backs and racing down the road with the wind blowing my hair.  i LOVE my dogs. well, most of them. i love how whenever i open the door, they run to me and compete for my hands to pat their heads. and backs, and bellys... i love how no matter where i go outside, they are right there beside me. i never feed the horses alone. i never take my evening jog alone (even when i try like a ninja to sneak away).  i love how they stay right by my side when i am out in the berry bushes contracting chiggers but not caring because blackberry cobbler is stuff of heaven. and who couldn't love that they are so cool they can pluck blackberries right from the bush and i just concentrate on the ones up top, because they call dibs on the low ones. i LOVE that my yard is the collection pool for all the neighborhood kids. i love seeing 7 little people squealing with delight as they bounce into the clear blue sky as high as they can go on the trampoline.  i love the creak of the swingset and seeing dirty little toes tip up over wildly flying hair.  i love lounging on the porch swing with my man in the evenings after supper and being the lucky one to have a front row seat to the grandest dance performances in all of the lands. (after all, what better place for little girls to twirl and sing than that of a wide front porch) i LOVE those day long weekly trips to the public pool with my girlfriends even though sometimes heat exhaustion comes into play, or the super round man who is festooned with skeleton tattoos that you can barely make out for his thick carpet of body hair seems to always be in your line of vision, or the box of cheez-its gets dumped out on your towel, or some kid doesn't realize that "dropping your kids off at the pool" isn't a free invitation to actually poop in the pool.  i LOVE making treats in the kitchen and delivering them to the neighbors. i have magnificent neighbors and not much makes me happier than to see their sheer delight when they peel back the plastic to unveil what kind of delight i brought them this time. (the saucepan brownies so far are the favorite)
so i believe i have solved the problem that i have.  my winter pout. i am an idiot. problem solved.
all i have done is let this cold air take away my LOVE. the things that i love the most, the things that have been worth mentioning, i don't do them. so.... i have no love.  how can i expect to be happy and to thrive in my existance without love??? well, i'll save myself the brain energy trying to figure it out.  i can't.  see, i know something. it may be a secret to some people, but it's not to me. the greatest thing that could ever be is love. it says so everywhere. in songs, in poems, in lectures, in sermons, in a parents promise, in a wedding kiss, in a baby's first breath.... but more than all of those locations, it says so in the bible. jesus said it. i know because it is in red in my book and all of the words jesus said are in red. it says it in black, too. in fact, the word love is in the bible so often, that one could conclude that the bible is the book of love, or that the person that commissioned that book is all about love. so i guess the saying is true then? "god is love" ... i am going to say yes. it's all true.  so what in the world does making brownies and petting dogs and jesus have to do with each other and why am i so not myself in the winter???  everything. when humans love and when humans act on said love, they are only proving to the world that they are christ's disciples. (john 13:35)  i guess i must specify when i refer to humans. when a human has christ in them, in their heart, that's the kind of love i refer to acting on.  anybody can simply love, but when that body can love in a christ like manner, everything changes and it is magical.  so my absence of love has been an absence of christ. he is my life blood, my bread, my fire, my drive. i have just allowed myself to seep away from him and in doing that, nothing has meaning or purpose.  it just isn't even exciting to get up hardly. i just crawl around and find myself bumping into my routine of a life. keeping busy with tasks that are joyless and ridiculous.  i try to stay above the current. i get out my bible every couple of days and do a little follow along devotion time in my current small group study. or even crack open my 90 day devotional that i have drug on to last a riotous 365 days to the letter and i am only still on day 42.  oh yes, i am so holy and righteous. i'm just not in it to win it right now.  and i wonder why i have an acute case of the S.A.D.s.  duh.
so here is my solution.
i need light. jesus is light.
i need critical early morning light.  we are suppossed to have our quiet time with jesus in the first part of our day.
the greatest of all is love. there are things i love to do that make me feel full of love.
so here is my equation for winter happiness. (me being the math genius and all)

morning devotion with jesus that is real and on purpose and sincere + include daily activities that make my love organ swell = happy

it's on like donkey kong. 

if you live near me, expect brownies.

the newly born

so ive been blogging in my head for years now and after finally sitting down and surfing this web and being inspired by others, it seems only right to write it all down.
its all just based on my what's inside me and what it all means.  what it means to me and to my family and to my community and to my world.
when im driving down the road and streaming thoughts rush through my mind and i dont know what it means but it makes perfect sense and im sure that it would sound great if i said it out loud.
when im watching my kids run through my messy house and am not sure if i want to join in the squealing childlike bliss, send them to their rooms, or just drive away.
when i see myself in the small waist high mirror in my bathroom and wonder how i got to look like this and if im too old for pink hair and a bikini.
when im at the grocery and my mouth waters for greek yogurt and foreign cheese and the big round crackers that appear to be gourmet and the exotic fruits and fancy olives and panko crumbs and raspberry vinaigrette in the actual glass bottles... but what ends up in the cart is boxes of store brand products like mac n cheese and tortillas and spaghetti sauce.
when that said cart is the engine to the crazy train of ridiculously loud and completely ridiculous and the caboose is the most unexplainable 4 year old in the history of the world.
when i cant even try to control the urge to pull over on the street side and take pictures of the clouds, because they have never been this gorgeous and for sure, will never be again.
when the day that im living makes me wonder why im here, how a soul can feel such anguish, and what a broken mess i am.
when the day that i am living makes me feel like i could fly through the sky and squeal with delight that this day was made for me and what a tiny humble human i really am to have the sheer intense blessing and joy to be given another morning to wake up and enjoy.
when all the people i love the most are in their beds and the house is quiet and i can shamelessly scour etsy and window shop to my hearts content with no distractions.  or edit photos of beautiful people till i am so proud my smile could break my face.  or veg on my super enveloping denim couch and watch silliness on tv that makes me forget what time it is.
or when i have interruptions like my young children in the kitchen making their own lunches and arguing the entire time over things that dont even make sense but loving it because time flys and soon they will all be gone, in their own lives in the their own houses, with their own stories and dreams.
when i know that my life is an effect of love.
when i know that my life is affected by love.
when the time is right to give birth to a blog.