I am finishing our Christmas letter and I am wrung out, a mess of emotion and memory and caffeine.  I am in the coffee shop with the windows because the sun is here today and I am watching the cars cross the bridge and the snow cover the ice and dead leaves move on emptying branches and I am wondering how long you have to be awake before taking a nap and how many naps a week you can take without crossing into lazy depression.

It has been one of those months with days that are either very hard or very good and so we have been rollercoastering about, husband and I.  We are one minute up, surrounded by our families and good food and full conversation and then we are down, struggling to love and to listen and to connect.  We are late night shouting and early morning holding and we are exhausting ourselves with the hot and cold moments.

Still, we are grateful so grateful to navigate the marriage of two bodies full of sin and selfish desire and glorious spirit.  He is clearer that He ever was, binding and pulling in love.  And always there is the cross and it is speaking hope into the dying that happens whenever two things must be only one.