I've Been Waiting My Whole Life for This!

Would you believe that in the last year I have experienced more "firsts" in my life than I ever thought possible?  

The truth is that nearly every day brings an opportunity for a "first" if my eyes are open in childlike wonder to them. I want to be like my four-year-old student who exclaimed when it finally snowed this January for the first time in his memory: "I've been waiting my whole life for this!" And he quite literally had!

But in order to have this joy in the new I have to welcome the fringes of my comfort zone.

I have to keep my priorities sturdy enough to motivate me yet soft enough to be moldable by the Holy Spirit.

I have to never lose a child's zest for exploration.

So maybe today's first is as seemingly banal as going to a new cafe or reading a new book, but it might be as life-changing as meeting a friend for the first time or starting a new job.  I should celebrate all of these firsts with child-like joy: I've been waiting my whole life for this!  So here is me choosing to celebrate:

1. As Mikaela already alluded to, I became an auntie!  I could type ferociously for an hour on how adorable I believe my nephew is and I could bog down your internet with pictures by the hundreds, but since Mikaela already promised some of that for next week, suffice it to say that I am in love.  And when I met him at only a few weeks old, I could hardly let him go. 

2. Last September a lifelong dream came true the moment I stepped onto a plane bound for the UK.  This unbelievable dream of a trip to Ireland, England, and Scotland brought:   
a cascade of first-time experiences {first time to use my passport!}
a flood of delight {charming castles by the side of the road!}
an insatiable wanderlust {can I move to Scotland?}
and an awe at this great world God has created {the world never before seemed so reachable yet so vast at the same time}.  

Here is just a taste of my two weeks:

 First time touching the Atlantic Ocean {in Scotland, no less!}

                        First time realizing what it feels like to step into a storybook castle...

 Devotions at sunrise in Edinburgh with an amazing group of people

Threave Castle.  First love. 

Edinburgh, my favorite city in the world.

 My travel partner in the most amazing trip ever! 

What wonderful memories we made together.

3. Some firsts I've recently experienced aren't so delightful as a trip to Europe or a new nephew, but nevertheless they have shaped the story of my life these last months: things like being sick on Christmas Day for the first time, or having my bank account information and $1500 stolen from me, or being a passerby in the street at the perfectly wrong moment and getting pepper-sprayed in the face.  But if those tiny drops of suffering soften me to be moldable by the Holy Spirit, then they are just as important and needed as the sunny days of joy.

4. 2016 in itself is a brand new experience with no mistakes in it yet!  January is already old news--folded up and shelved--and February is swiftly joining, but here is what I want to remember this year for all the firsts that await:

I've been waiting my whole life for this.  
What firsts have you experienced lately?

It's So Nice to See You Again!

Suddenly, it has been 227 days, 8 hours, and 19 minutes since I last posted here. In that time, my firstborn has arrived! Does the exhaustion of the last two months of pregnancy, the haze of recovering from labor, and the steep learning curve of being a new mother excuse me from my unplanned absence? 

I debated about whether I should just post as if everything was normal (sort of sliding into my desk in the back of the classroom, hoping the teacher doesn't notice my tardiness), or whether I should call attention to my long silence by announcing: "I'm back!" 

I've missed writing and am elated to be at it again. Furthermore, as I was coming up with my new and improved bio (read it under the "about us" tab if for no other reason than the fact that it contains a picture of my son!), I realized just how much of my life this blog has encompassed. This month marks the 7th year that One Bright Corner has been around, which is nearly a third of my life--and certainly the most eventful seven years of my life. It's a record of events and thoughts and trivial interests and lots of growth for which I am so grateful, and a record I am so excited to continue.

Look for new posts most every Friday around here. Lauren will be posting next week, and in two weeks I'll be back with heaps of pictures and as many words as I can manage to describe the birth of Liam and how he made me a mother.

The Parable I Learned From An Orchid

It was orchid watering day when I nearly beheaded one of my plants.

Every couple weeks I spend a few moments over these flowers of mine, pretending to have a green thumb, enjoying the quiet.  I love it simply because orchids have enthralled me for as long as I can remember.  In fact, as a teenager I was sadly disappointed to read in one of the Anne of Green Gables books that orchids were too exotic to strike Anne's fancy.  To me, you see, the wide open blooms are like a welcoming smile on an honest face.  The blossoms floating from the stem conveys a grace I can only marvel at...

But back to my story...on this particular watering day I was delighted to notice new buds and blossoms on each one of my orchids.  Smiling happily, I worked to stake up a few of the stems burgeoning with heavy buds.  

Suddenly, I felt a sickening snap under my fingers as I straightened one stem against a stake, and realized to my horror that I had all but entirely snapped the stem in two.  It was hanging on by only a thread, and as I held the still-beautiful stem in my hand, I could hardly believe that I had really just broken it off.  The four or five buds it held, promising beautiful, luscious flowers in just a few weeks' time, now seemed to be taunting me of what I had destroyed.  

I didn't know what to do.  Should I snap it off the rest of the way and put the stem in a vase with the slim hope I would still get to see a few blooms?  Should I leave it there and hope the stem didn't grow diseased and infect the entire plant?  Although a quick internet search encouraged me in the snapping direction, I couldn't bring myself to do the deed.  So I just left the stem hanging on for dear life and ignored my sad little orchid for the next week or so, resigned to the fact that I had probably just killed any chance of blossoms from it for awhile.

But little did I know that while I left the broken stem for dead, something very alive was happening within that broken plant.  For fragile though orchids may appear, fussy though they may seem, they are actually among the most miraculous pictures of new birth that you will find in nature.

Some weeks later when I finally brought myself to assess the damage I had done, I could hardly believe I was looking at the same plant.  Not only had the broken stem begun to grow back together and continue to send life to the buds, but a new stem had begun to sprout from the break, and another little nub of a baby stem was beginning to peek out in a different spot.

I was astounded and humbled, and as I stared at the miracle blooming before my eyes, I realized the greater miracle the Creator of this orchid was teaching me:  that God is in the business of healing "the brokenhearted and bind[ing] up their wounds." {Ps. 147:3}  

He is the master of not just repair but rebirth. {Romans 6}

My orchid was not simply "just as good as before."  It was actually better than before, and isn't the analogy to our lives breathtaking?  God takes the broken stems of my life and the barely-born buds of vision that seem doomed to die and He sends life through them, growing stems and flowers beyond what I could have imagined. 

When a friend betrayed me, He became my Friend more truly than ever before.
When I was proud and tripped over my own ego, falling flat on my face, He picked me up and taught me humility.
When I was brokenhearted, He comforted me with His great grace, and I grasped for the first time just how un-graspable the well of His grace is.

So every time I look at my broken taped-up orchid and see not one, not two, but three potential stems and all the beauty they are pregnant with, I see myself.  I see my brokenness.  I see the tape holding my life and my heart together, and I see the new things God has done in me that He never could have accomplished had I remained unbroken.  And I marvel that, just as He has done throughout history, God used a humble flower to show me these truths.  

"Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these."
{Matthew 6:28b-29}

Look Up

June brought in warm evenings like summer's heralding banner, and the rich woolly sky blanketed the sleepy house where some friends and I were cuddled up for a late night.  My phone suddenly buzzed at me with a message from my mama, but not the one I was expecting: "Go look outside!"

"Girls--listen to this!" I cried, and we all jumped up, heavy eyelids instantly opened in wonder.

We leapt outside in our bare feet, spiraling in circles with our arms outstretched and our eyes heavenward, trying to spot Jupiter and Venus converging into one visual spectacular.  Desperate to beat the expiration of a perhaps once-in-a lifetime sight, we ran down to the golf course, but trees shut us in on every side.

We charged back up to the main road and sprinted down the asphalt, past dark houses that scowled at our wakefulness at such an hour.  When I rounded the last bend in the road, coming to where it sprouted off from a busy street, the sky unrolled across the horizon above a treeless field, and there the great conjunction of the two planets shone in a star-of-Bethlehem-like brilliance.

The two planets danced so closely together that their brightness was mesmerizing to anyone who laid eyes on the sight.  And we were no exception.  The four of us made a rock our arm chair, and I sat in awe with my hands clasped around my legs.

There was no clock to fetter the flitting moments down.

There was no rhythm ticking an impending deadline besides the unison beating of our hearts.

So we watched in reverent silence, our backs masked by the darkness, but our faces lit by the light of the star.  With such a sight glittering in our eyes, we couldn't help but sing hymns of praise to the Morning Star, and there was something special about that worship by the roadside that I won't ever forget.

Time lapsed...cars streaked by...but the star, my friends, and I remained.

It struck me as we sat how odd we must have looked to the passersby.  But when a busy, harried soul drove by and saw four women with their eyes rapturously fixed on the sky, I wondered if he would follow our gaze and look up, even if just out of curiosity.

In that moment on that warm June evening a chill went down my back.  For through my wondering I found a rich nugget that I've carried with me these past six months.

Shouldn't my eyes perpetually be fixed with equally rapturous delight on Jesus the Morning Star?

And shouldn't I be so enthralled by and illuminated with His light that all who pass me can't help but follow my gaze and stare, not at me, but at Who I am looking to?

Yes and yes.

And if at the end of my days it is said that the best analogy for the thrust of my life was that beautiful, worshipful evening of looking up, I will be satisfied.  If it is said of my life that all who looked at me couldn't help but look to Jesus because of me, my mission will be complete. 

“We Choose to See Vol. 002,” © 2013 AMRenault, used under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/.