Its been raining in Nashville since we got home from our trip to the Midwest. Three straight days of rain... complete with bad hair days, wet shoes and soaked bottoms of my jeans (yet another reason that high heels ARE a blessing). A part of me wishes it would stop raining so the sun could grace us again with its presence... maybe then everything would make sense and be right in the world. But for now, the rain strangely seems to fit.

I read something today (at Bongo Java, not surprisingly). It said that "before spring becomes beautiful, it is plum ugly, nothing but mud and muck.... But in that muddy mess, the conditions for rebirth are being created".

Conditions for a new season. And with this new season await new springs of life, new joys, new sorrows and, in many ways, new depths of purpose. I find myself fighting the temptation to manufacture my own expectations or paint a portrait of a hypothetical landscape for what this new season might bring along with it. But in all honesty, I just want to see His glory in it... surely that is more than enough.

Over the last few weeks I have called out earnestly for direction... for peace in what has seemed like a whirlwind of potential possibilities. I tried to listen and I tried to wait. I walked forward asking for doors to open or close according to His perfect plan. I made lists of objective facts (lists that led me right back to where I started). I had my mind made up, but He had other plans. Im not sure whether or not I have walked well or prayed well through this. Scripture reminds me that my greatest effort, no matter how noble, is like filthy rags when compared to His marvelous light. Rags they may be... but He also says that He glories not in the tattered condition of my rags but in the placement of them at His feet as a humble, broken act of surrender. O Lord, have mercy.

I ask for your prayers... that He would lead and I would follow... that our efforts would bear fruit not in and of themselves, but as long-sustaining fruit of the seeds He has watered and caused to grow. Its so easy to leap forward into a life we are not yet ready for... to so badly desire the warm rays of sunshine that we curse the necessary renewal that comes from a good rain shower, however dreary it may seem.

"Behold, I will do something new, now it will spring forth; Will you not be aware of it? I will even make a roadway in the wilderness, rivers in the desert" Isaiah 43:19

PS: Yes, I chopped my hair this week. I tried to post pics a few days ago but my internet connection was cruddy and it didn't post correctly. So... here ya go. Lend me your thoughts!