It is the week after the big change and the leaves have been swept into the street and the days continue to lose light and there is no avoiding the big winter coat and heavy boots and flat hat hair because it is bitter outside.  

But inside it is all cinnamon and hot heat and couch blankets and thick socks.  Inside there are whispers of holidays and dinner parties and the christmas tree hunt out at the Croppers and it is holding the summer mourning at bay.

And then there is Sunday morning sitting with Paul mulling through his star shining challenge and I am stumbling over the line I have read so many times but have not heard and I am going back, reading it again, back again, and again, and again.  I am praying to the Father.  I am thinking, hard.  And I am growing a little- there in that chair.  I am wising just a bit.  Later, too, in the hot tub with husband while the first snow falls.  That line is still there and I am speaking it out loud.  We are working on the definition of an old word that we have hushed somehow, limiting it to one moment in our story but here is Paul saying, No, this is all your story is.  This is the story.  And I am feeling foolish.  I am feeling sheepish.  I am feeling so on top of the world, too.  

Because all of this-- it all makes sense when I think about it this way.  And the things that I complain for, the things I can not stop speaking of in that tone I have with that frown I do.  Those all seem so quiet now.  I'm missing out on the story when I tell it that way.  I'm missing out on Him when I can not speak well of where I am.  

I'm forgetting to continue to work out my salvation with fear and trembling.  So that all of the moments that stem from the very first moment with Him- they are all salvation.  He is always saving me.  He has put me here to save me all over again.  He has given me this job, these people, this town, this new family- all of it and I have forgotten to continue to work salvation out.  Here, not there.  Right here. 

Oh.

I'm starting to get it.