there are aspects...

"this is the day that the Lord has made"
or so the saying goes.

that i truly, deeply miss about my home in temecula. not just california, and not just temecula, but my actual house - the back yard specifically. i strongly believe that every great childhood requires a great back yard. far too many children are without one here. this is probably because they spend 13 hours of the day in school.

i was thinking today about how i've been living the past 4 months with no moments of silence. one can always here people, cars, the whirring of fans, the tinkling of store door bells, the murmur of conversation wherever one goes. it's difficult to block out the white noise, though i've tried. and i realize how very much i miss spring mornings in that house. when i have gotten up early enough there, i have experienced mornings when time actually seemed to stop. when i can't hear traffic or people, because everyone's still asleep, and i can't hear the main roads when so few cars are on them. the windows in our kitchen face directly at a hill over which, if you catch it on a clear morning, has a perfect and breathtaking sunrise. the light slowly peeps over the hills and bounces off the trees, the flowers, and the quiet homes on the other side of the gully separating our house from the rest of meadowview. the air still has a piercing cold bite to it, but the coffee forces the cold to the surface of my body. the cold air and mist around me softly kisses my hands and face. the sunshine slowly melts the cold away, and illuminates the dew on the grass, leaving before me a glistening carpet of deep green. the kind of green that makes me think of more than freshness or my favorite sweater or of eyes. but a profound green, which almost lures me into resolving myself to only eating organic and inherently useful things. of never looking at anything processed or metallic again. and as the sun slowly metamorphoses from a faint pink to a bolder blue, i start to awaken from my trance and think about my day and my responsibilities.

many a time have i thought, especially as i've gotten older, about the stillness of those mornings. here, i long for those mornings. for the taste of the coffee, for the warmth of a soft sweater wrapped around me. i long for the ability to be still in those moments. to just be, and to know that He is. how i long for them. i think that when i return, i will make it a point to have a first morning just like that.