Windows

I love my bedroom. When we moved into this house with two tiny toddlers, it felt like a dream come true. It was our first home, and the reality of calling a place “ours” was enchanting. The delight has not yet worn off.

I crave light almost as much as I crave oxygen, and this house is an ocean of luminance. The windows are arranged in just the right places.

The two times of day that are physically most painful for me align with sunrise and sunset. As is often the case when God cares so deeply for us, great glory meets me in my moments of greatest suffering.

The east-facing bay window of the kitchen opens the house to the cascading rays of the rising sun, which always seems to quicken my pulse just a bit.

Our bedroom, on the other end, faces the west. Many days, especially during this season of quarantine-induced stretching and refinement in the form of distance learning, as soon as Jordan arrives home from work, I retreat to the bedroom to collapse in bed in absolute exhaustion and physical agony.

But the sunset breaks in through the spaced wooden blinds and spread across my bed. As the sun floods my room with warm soothing oranges, peaches, pinks, and purples, the sharp edges of illness soften a bit. In fact, my focus often turns on its heel as I breathe in the gratitude for this illuminated place of rest.

I know people say, “it’s the little things that often bring deep joy,” but oh my goodness: These moments of rich blessedness feel massive against the minor inconvenience of being home-bound and sometimes bed-bound.

When God brought our family to this home, He knew I would need the gift of the light of the setting sun to dispel the darkness of continual suffering in the later hours of the day when my pain feels interminable.

He’s in the big stuff. He’s in the details. He doesn’t always take away the pain, but He does better: He meets us in it with a love story in which He never leaves our side. He may not always give us that for which we ask, but He will give us His best. In Him, His promises are yes and amen. He is the giver of good gifts. My reminders today of God’s sweet lovingkindness are the stripes of the sunset warmly blanketing me and my sweet cuddle buds.