It's November...
It's starting to get cold and drizzly. The perfect cuddle-up-in-a-blanket-with-hot-chocolate-and-a-good-book weather is upon us. The days are getting shorter, the nights are getting longer. The stars are getting all the brighter.
The hint of snow is in the air for a lucky group of people who live in a place I like to call my "home." It's almost exactly a month until I will be home. It's coming the time when I'll wake up to frost on my window, to a world covered in white. Oh! how excited I am for snow! Until I came to the South, I never realized how much snow contributed to my pre-holiday-season jitters.
It's rolling down to the end of the semester for us school-going folks. As the weather gets more and more frightful, I'm inclined to snuggle up with a cozy cup of coffee...and study? I can think of worse ways to spend my time.
It's November, Friend. November. Has it hit you yet? Has the closeness of Thanksgiving and Christmas started to sneak up behind you and tickle the back of your neck in a tingle of anticipation?
How fast the time goes! This year especially, I feel it whirring by at a crazy, crazy speed. To think I've been on my own at college for almost three months! I feel like so much has happened...and yet nothing, at the same time. So many lasts, so many firsts, so much love pervading it all. It's a quiet life I live... I feel like my life itself is in the month of November. I don't know why. I can't really describe it. The colors are bright and achingly beautiful, even though the skies are dark above. It's cozy and comfortable, but there's something haunting and chilling about it. It's a gentle, hurried, hushed, easy, unpredictable life...with Thanksgiving at the heart of it all. It's the last bit of calm before the rush of a December-sort-of-life begins, ushering the busyness of the season. It's calm. It's beautiful.
And I'm in love. There's something about love that just makes the world a bit rosier... It makes you want to get up in the morning and go do something. It makes you want to laugh, and cry, and love on the people around you.
It's crazy, this little thing called love. It's only what my whole world is centered around... For God is love, my friend. God is love. Radical, radiant, rejoicing, ransoming, reconciling, romancing, resplendent...love.
And that is why I love my quiet world. For in the midst of hustle and bustle, too often I miss the call, "Hush! Be still." But He has given me this beautiful season of quietness. How thankful I am for my November life! He has set apart this time to press into my heart, "You are Mine. Mine. And I love you beyond what you can possibly imagine." I don't know when November will end and the craziness of December will begin. I'm too enthralled with November. There is the tickle of something coming, something exciting, some grand adventure... It could be next month, next year, or next decade, but I will not fret. I will enjoy the tingle in my toes when I think about it, but I will live with both feet planted firmly in November. For that is where I am, where He has placed me, and why would I run from what my all-knowing, all-loving Daddy has planned for me? What care He uses to determine my steps! What gentleness He uses to guide me along the path He has paved with His deep, deep affection for me.
I love November, Friend. I love November. The month of May may have more flowers; June may be warmer; January may have more new beginnings; March may have more promise; and there is a time and place for each month. But I am very, very happy to have been placed in November.
Tell me, Friend: What month is your life in?
