How Marvelous, How Wonderful!

Ephesians 5:19 refers to "...singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart..." a phrase that I see daily on my fridge calling out from the magnet I painted years ago for my dorm file cabinet.  It takes on new meaning for me right now, without a voice.  I took a walk this afternoon, my first in what seems many months, because the dry road edges and rare sunshine have beckoned me all day, and my cough has finally subsided enough I feel I can go out in the cold without much risk.  How wonderful to see defined little squirrel footprints traced all over the dusting of fresh snow; to speculate over how many neighbors' footprints, along with their dogs, I am following behind; to close the bottom of my sweater against the occasional cold breeze; to see the dancing tree shadows again, because finally there is sunshine to light them up; to look overhead and smile at the blue sky and the mares' tails blowing off the front edge of the coming cold; to feel my muscles working together to carry me uphill; to hear the chickadees, crows, breeze in the pine boughs, the life-sustaining fluid sloshing around my baby.  I think of my coming baby boy, who could arrive any week, and trust in God's perfect timing despite all my various worries.  I daydream about holding him for the first time, and introducing him to Lincoln and making him a perfect part of our little family.  I smile as I come around the bend in my road and see in the distance the purple front door of my home, and Lincoln's bedroom window, and the garden fence we built, and the for sale sign at the end of the driveway--and again find my contentment in the trust I can safely place in Him to arrange our lives just-rightly.  And behind all these things, keeping rhythm with my steps, my heart sings the refrain of the old hymn, "how marvelous, how wonderful is my Savior's love for me!"