Popcorn + Brownies

There are so many contrasting thoughts and experiences running through my head. The hard part about this blog sometimes, about keeping you all up to date, is deciding what needs to be shared when I feel like everything is so very important.

I want to tell you all about the trees here that smell delicious, but only at night. About the fruit I can’t pronounce but want to smuggle back with me when I come home. About tea made from sugar canes and my ever flowing cup of local coffee and hot chocolate. I want to tell you how, before we go home each night, when I look down at the city from the top of the mountain, it looks like its made of glowing embers and Christmas lights. Then, when we’ve reached the bottom and I look back at the mountain, its as if hundreds of blue and yellow stars have all clustered together behind me. I want to tell you all how the kids lay there heads in my lap while they listen to the bible reading and smother me with kisses every time they see me.

I WANT TO TELL Y'ALL ALL ABOUT HOW I'M BEING REBUILT AND RESTORED.

But, I also want y'all to better understand the complete brokenness that I am being rebuilt from. I want you to comprehend how utterly shattered I have been so that you can better see the wonder of the season God has brought me to now.

At the worst of it, the voice inside my head was that of a stranger. I had lost my spark, my joy, my spirit of adventure and unquenchable hope, and I feared they would never come back.

Anybody who’s lived with me, or married to someone who once lived with me, [lookin at you Taylor and Nathan] knows that I have one or two quirks. Two of those being that I believe that brownies make for the best breakfast, and popcorn is basically a vegetable and thereby an acceptable meal. Sure these aren’t the most “nutritious” life loves, but they bring me joy and I’ve always believed a happy soul is more important than “real vegetables” or “being an adult”.

Well, one morning last week I sat down to breakfast and was served a large homemade brownie to eat with my coffee and hot chocolate. Needless to say, that made my day. In days past I would have taken that on its own as a symbol of hope and promise, but with so many open soars not yet turned to scars, I needed more. [Even if breakfast brownies aren’t a staple anywhere other than my own kitchen.] But, last Sunday when a big bowl of stove popped popcorn was brought out for dinner, I realized God was trying to give me my rainbow.

As weird as it may sound to yall, that bowl of popcorn for me was my promise of hope, my reassurance of God’s love for all of the little things that make me who I am. As I was munching on that popcorn and watching “Monsters University” in Spanish I knew that, at least for now, the hard season was over. I can freely enjoy the love and hope that God is giving me without fear of what tomorrow will bring, or take away.

Though Im not wholly back to being myself again, [fifty percent better than zero is still only fifty percent] I now feel reassured that God is going to make sure I do get back to one hundred percent. He is going to comical measures to make sure I don’t lose all of the little quirks that make me, me, and I absolutely love that. My voice is returning. My love of life is back in full swing and I am soaking in every moment that God gives me in this sanctuary for my soul.

view from the top of the mountain

tomales, hot chocolate and coffee for breakfast last Saturday