Forty Days and Nights

Forty days is always a biblically significant period of time. Major shifts seem to occur over forty day periods. Things happen, things change. Big things and little ones. I'm finding the same principle to be true in my life. It's staggering the amount of change my life has seen in my forty day Lenten break from blogging. Here are some of the changes, both big and small.

• Every closet and drawer in the house has been cleaned out and re-organized. Boxes line the carport awaiting their fate in the upcoming garage sale. 
• Keith and I are once again contemplating an uproot of ourselves and our ragtag band of cats, this time to a tiny town in North Carolina. He returned from a campus interview just yesterday and we hope to have news next week. What kind of news it may be, none can tell.
• My family has been through, and come out the other side of, a harrowing legal process in which God showed his faithfulness, power, and love over and over and over again. 
• I've dropped fifteen pounds and picked up some wonderful new habits of eating and exercise that I plan to continue. Keith and I have become hikers. We even bought new tennis shoes (Keith's first new pair since 2003).
• Our time in front of the television has been reduced to a sliver of its former glory and we've started eating all our meals at the kitchen table rather than the coffee table. It's almost like we're adults or something.
• Keith's dissertation has been typeset, proofed and indexed and should be available in published, official book form sometime in June. I'm married to an author!
• The persistent migraines that have kept me from my usual reading habit for over a year now seem to have disappeared and I'm racing through the Anne of Green Gables series for the fiftieth time and George MacDonald's collective works for the first, plus anything else I can get my hands on. Got any recommendations?

We've been through another cycle of Lenten darkness and Easter light. The desert journey followed by the glorious victory of life over death and freedom from sin and bondage. We've pushed through struggles and setbacks and waves of busyness. We've laughed more and we've talked more and we've been more intentional with our time. Work is still crazy, life is still wonderfully full as it continues it's well-worn course. We have no idea what comes next, but we're simultaneously bracing ourselves for the impact and opening our arms to embrace whatever the future may hold.