A Secret Garden

Sarah came to visit!!! 

 Rehearsal for the magnificent Haydn's Creation 

Excited!

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The following collection is titled: The digression of an all-night work session.

10:30 PM The optimistic Sugar High

12:30 AM: The unproductive, Pinterest Scrolling sugar low. Acorn Squash

1:30 AM: The moment I realize this will take all night. 

Dramatic Shadows forebode the long hours to come.

 2:30 am: Confused by these many, many lists and grids

3:30 AM: Loopy

4:30 AM: Almost there

6:00 AM: Nap Time

I must say that the meeting I was preparing for this during this night went extraordinarily well.

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The next day brought weather like this. 

 So we made our own sunshine by hanging out and eating the yumminess above. 

Friday Night a group of us went to see Interstellar

 Then Dave and Austin and I came back and made cider and sat by the fire and ate (really good) chocolate and philosophized about art and music and whatever else our happy, tired brains thought of.

Winter inside and out of the window. 

If you do not yet know the intense joy of putting up a new, perfectly clean shower curtain, I wish that joy to come upon you soon. Oh happy day :) 

Cleaning, organizing, talking to mum, texting Sarah Beth and reading Lewis and Valley of Vision on Sunday afternoon. 

Sunshine on a cold, cold day

Getting to do what I love to do every day with such precious little ones. 

Practice time on a glorious concerto (Mendelssohn)

Starting in on this masterpiece today

A gorgeous aria on the classical radio station 

The coziness of the heavy winter comforter

 As I loaded these pictures, I was once again privately bemoaning the fact that many of the very dearest, deepest moments of the last two weeks aren't represented here. But then I smiled to think, again, that this is perhaps as it should be. The very dearest moments are ones which are only captured by the pen of God. It struck me that this canvas on which they are etched - our minds - is very much like Eden: a place of beauty and naked vulnerability. In this place is recorded with absolute sacred privacy the deepest, unashamed, unpolluted ecstasies of the heart, the quietist unuttered whispers of happiness, the aching relief which has no words at all. This is a place in which we have always the choice to walk in sweet fellowship with our maker savoring this beauty in worship to him alone. What will that day be like when we - the ransomed church - stand before Him in the new heaven and the new earth, our veils of fallen flesh thrown back and secret joys made known without jealousy or fear or shame or  pride, but only worship for all eternity!