My God is might to save, He is mighty to save

Picture: An unseasonable (albeit beautiful) choice of picture today. This is Schweitzer Mountain in the winter. (Um, really Heidi? It's in the winter?) My parents live really close to Schweitzer, in northern Idaho. The picture is beautiful when it's bigger - it really looks fake or painted because it's so pretty.

So I'm updating from home this morning, as opposed to my midday attempt to update at work...which inevitably never works because I keep having to slyly minimize my internet window.

For the second day in a row since being home from the Southland, I pulled myself out of bed to make it to the gym, with no regrets. It's SO hard to get up at 4:40am, but totally worth it when I feel extra refreshed after my shower...from being sweaty, sticky and stinky before-hand. I love exercising. It makes me a more content person...happier and more up-beat about life in general.

Anyway, before Dan wakes up and my day starts I wanted to post these snip-its from Streams in the Desert. This excerpt reminded me of my dear friend Becca (Carpenter) Jemison, whose family has suffered loss in the past and most recently she lost a niece and a sister in unrelated deaths, within hours of each other. This reading also brought to mind her dear brother Myers and his wife Laura, who lost their 8-week old daughter, Gwen:

"'In the shadow.' We must all go there sometimes. The glare of the daylight is too brilliant; our eyes become injured, and unable to discern the delicate shades of color, or appreciate neutral tints - the shadowed chamber of sickness, the shadowed house of mourning, the shadowed life from which the sunlight has gone.

But fear not! It is the shadow of God's hand. He is leading thee. There are lessons that can be learned only there.

The photograph of His face can only be fixed in the dark chamber. But do not suppose that He has cast thee aside. Thou art still in His quiver; He has not flung thee away as a worthless thing.

He is only keeping thee close till the moment comes when He can send thee most swiftly and surely on some errand in which He will be glorified. Oh, shadowed, solitary ones, remember how closely the quiver is bound to the warrior, within easy reach of the hand, and guarded jealously."

This was part of my reading from this morning that was significant to me:

"...God shines on thee to make thee fit for life's desert places - for its Gethsemanes, for its Calvaries. He lifts thee up that He may give thee strength to go farther down; He illuminates thee that He may send thee into the night, that He may make thee a help to the helpless.

The time of testing that marks and mightily enriches a soul's spiritual career is no ordinary one, but a period when all hell seems let loose, a period when we realize our souls are brought into a net, when we know that God is permitting us to be in the Devil's hand. But it is a period which always ends in certain triumph for those who have committed the keeping of their souls to Him, a period of marvelous 'nevertheless afterward' of abundant usefulness, the sixty-fold that surely follows."

God is moving in my life and in my heart and I love to see Him transform me, gently teaching me that His way and His timing are and always SO much better than my own...