A few weeks ago I was ready to run away. Far away. Because of COVID19, the safety of that guttural urge needed to be modified, but not before I searched Air&B for possibilities and even called my cousin in Georgia to see if I could come spend time with them. Looking a bit closer to home, I first tried the North Shore. Either they were not taking guests or they were booked. Then, I remembered there was a family who rented out their tiny house on one of the lakes less than 30 minutes south of us. It was definitely not the best time of year to there go, but I “needed” to book something!
Quite a few years ago we met the tiny house owners and their 2 little kids at a tiny house symposium in Deborah, Iowa. (I have been kind of obsessed with tiny houses for years—even before Tiny House Nation made them more popular). At the time of the symposium, they and their 2 kids were living full time in the tiny house. The kids are now older and I suspect simply made that way of life more difficult as they aged, but thankfully for us, they now rent it out.
It was our first time staying in a classic tiny house. Yay! You would think I would be ecstatic, but the 3 nights we had booked did not go the way I would have thought. The weather was unusually warm and sunny, so that was not the problem. I could blame my mood on the fact my husband only came down at night (after dark). I could also blame it on the fact we decided to let the dog stay home, and I needed to go home each afternoon to let her out. (It was actually kinda nice, because I did not have to think about 3 days of food ahead of time. I just picked up what we needed each afternoon.) Or it could have been that the lake had just frozen over and the kayaks laying on shore made that kinda depressing.
I brought with my Dreambook Planner for the new year along with colored pencils thinking I would work on that. I also had books to read loaded on my iPad. For a few weeks I had been thinking my Word for 2021 might be “place”. In my new journal I brought with, I looked up the definition of “place” in the dictionary. (I had decided I was going to start journaling again daily, and Advent was a good time to start. The first day in the tiny house was Monday, the second day of Advent.).
Over the following days looked up possible bible verses that contained the word “place.” I looked up synonyms, poetry, quotes, anything I found. On the third day, the day before we were supposed to go home, I wrote the word “abide” in the margins with a question mark. Looking up the meaning of the word “abide”, I saw that “tolerate” was one of the meanings. Not really liking that meaning, I did not look any further.
Now we are what was 2 days ago. I have been following the readings in a book called Celtic Advent: 40 Days of Devotion to Christmas. (Both Celtic Christianity and the Orthodox Church have the tradition on 40 days of Advent in reflection of the 40 days of Lent. I am not going to go into those details here). I was catching up in the book because I had missed the reading from the day we checked out, which meant I was reading 2 days at once. Interestingly, both of those days included the word “abide.”
Of course it stood out to me, as I had considered it as a possible Word for 2021 earlier in the week.
Hmm…? Maybe I needed to spend a bit more time with that word. I mentioned to a friend that I needed to actually taste it and let it roll around in my mouth a bit more. I can still spit it out if it is really too unappetizing.
People ask how you find a word for the year. It is said it often finds you. I am still not sure if my Word for 2021 will be “abide”, but unlike before, I am thinking it might have something to teach me.
Yesterday, I painted the word. That part in the Bible where God says we will be in Him and He is us is a bit hard to visualize. Maybe it is like water in cells flowing in and out, yet, there seems to be not out. Maybe it swills in and out like air. Swirling…over…around…in…through.
Back to the tiny house, my most favorite part was the sunsets. I only included two pictures, but I took many!
