It’s not a shocker that moving to the City threw me off my happy European blogging train. I didn’t write much for months, because I couldn’t see beauty. But in December, there was light. I wrote this post Christmas week, and share now because it is still true. And maybe you've been in this good place, too?

December 21, 2011
With damp drizzles and no sign of white, it feels like the beginning of spring here, but they say it’s almost Christmas. The scent of the drying tree has deepened to pine-cushion concentration and plaid-wrapped presents are stacked all around, so I’m starting to believe them. Perhaps this spring vibe is because there has been a clearing in the past week, and I’m feeling new. For months, pockets of fear have overwhelmed me, but this week? It's the week of His coming.

The past couple months have held little writing, I know all too well. I miss words and photos in abundance, but in the scarcity and in the health upsets of late, I’ve been given the reminder that silence is good. It’s not always good to speak my mind. The truth of the past few months has been that pain is hard, and weakness is humiliating. But it is always when I have to face something large that I see the truth most clearly.

He is here, in me. This trouble will not control me.

I’ve said to Walker innumerable times that I just want to feel like myself again—pain digs up discontent and fears I didn’t know I had, and I am rude, unkind, fearful, and sad. I suppose, though, who I am is not who I like to think. I am small.

And this Christmas, I'm realizing again that He came to suffer. He came and chose pain, and isolation, and no one else understanding. To give hope, not only of no pain someday, but of joy in pain today. This is the healing---that even when I cannot figure out why my body attacks itself, and even when the medicines that should work don’t, He is in me still. It means that His hand is on my back, and I feel it when I am emptied. He touched this broken world through being broken, and I feel Him when I am most broken.

The past few weeks have brought a bit of a settling, a few more answers, a few more diagnoses. So I read this again to remind myself that His hand is still here. I want that to surround me, that thought, all day. He is holding me.

He is sufficient. Joy, joy!

p.s. Walker passed both of his big financial exams!
p.p.s. I got a job. More soon!
p.p.p.s. I think I'm getting out of my no-blogging funk.

Oh, and one more tidbit from New York? This weekend, I threw a paper towel or two in the toilet accidentally (stupid!) and it clogged even the mighty Toto. Despite two trips to Home Depot, it was Sunday morning and still clogged. Know what that meant? Sneaking up to the bathroom on the roof in the morning, and slinking into the dark gym at night. It made me feel like I was camping in a city--and we ended up discovering all the hidden bathrooms in our building. Then, our Super came and saved us. Oh, city.