we have named our apartment “meriggiare,” which is italian for “sit out the noon.” it’s a shaded place, a hot-but-shaded place, and it is welcoming and restful and wonderful in the heat of this desert, and i love that the light reminds me of europe. it makes me happy.
i’ve been saying that a lot: “i am happy,” “i am so happy!” “i am really, really happy.” It feels like an experiment in joy, a “did God, would God, has He, is He” meeting my expectations and going far beyond what i could have imagined when all this started back in november last year.
we have margin, and a place to “sit out the noon” and invite people in and sit down and do some quiet living if we want to, in spite of the construction and remodeling around us here. i kind of don’t want to move very soon. i could see us doing christmas here, maybe a year or two until we have saved a little to put down on a house or something. it has its quirks, but we like it.
i keep thinking about life, about how it would have been dumb of God to make people and then give them a to-do list in regard to Him. we put our own spirituality onto our dust, almost like an eternal penance for eating the fruit in the garden – but we were made in His image as humans, spirit in dust, and i really do believe that He meant for us to praise Him by just being what he made us to be, with the added element of eternal life that allows us to know Him and eventually, to see Him as He is.
i don’t know how it all works together, living human and being His, but that’s what it is, a paradox that means i am in the world and not really of it, that says i am under grace which restores me to Him to simply *be.*