Thursday

In every condition...

Untitled
Christian contentment is that sweet, inward, quiet, gracious frame of spirit, which freely submits to and delights in God's wise and fatherly disposal in every condition.
Jeremiah Burroughs
It's only a hundred feet or so to the pasture, but the air weighs heavy like a wet blanket and the distance feels like miles.  

I will myself to put one swollen foot in front of the other, and when I reach the back of the pasture near the fence parallel to the creek, I sit right down in the grass. It would be just as easy to climb a mountain as it would be to return to the house for a towel. The wet soaks right through to my skin.  

I wonder how long I sit here before neighbors worry that I've fallen, but it's far more likely that no one will even notice, and I laugh at myself - a grown woman still in her pajamas sitting outside on the dew-soaked ground like a child without a care. 

It's not in my nature to have wandered out here these days, and I question my reasoning and sanity. No backyard swing, sweetgum trees or painted buntings. Not even the small patches of wildflowers along the fence to the east entice me to move. I'm left sitting in the shadows cast by the long-needle pines towering above, and for some strange reason, it's more than enough.