Crickets? Cobwebs?

I know. It's been quiet (again) around here. I just thought I'd pop in and write something so as not to give the impression that I have spent three months -- really? Three??? -- languishing in concussed grouchiness.

I have not. Indeed, as I did mention at the end of that most recent blog post, the grumpy spell ended before I'd hit "Publish".

Life is good. I found a home to rent in preparation for the cousins/house-sit hosts' return, although the process by which it was secured was so improbable that it seems more as if the home found me. Said home is so "me" in so many more ways than I could list offhand, and here I had been thinking I'd settle for anything that had a working lock. Preferably without a verbose landlord living on the same premises, but when you're desperate...

I have been learning -- and that is part of the reason for this season of blog silence -- the fine art of being blessed. To be precise, I've been learning how to stand there and let the blessing drench me, instead of bolting like a startled pony or starting to pare down what my heart desires until it more closely resembles "what I will only just live with because I think I have no choice". Learning to wait, learning that as I live in my Creator and him in me, our wills come together and what he gives me is what I always wanted.

It is a scary thing, knowing that the One who blesses knows exactly where you live. Physically and metaphorically. For most of my life I have not been able to handle that knowledge. I didn't know the proper protocol for dealing with someone who relentlessly pursues you with goodness. In this life where the mail rarely holds something more exciting than bills; where even friendships too easily turn transactional and some only reconnect with you for the sake of using your social networking contacts to expand their business, how foreign is the concept of someone who gives perfectly.

Some are better than others at the fine art of resting by the mailbox. Image by RJ Roth.

Yet this is who he says he is, and who he demonstrates himself to be. So I believe. And I rest in believing.

Although I don't quite have the photogenic light-capturing attributes of certain grey felines.