blogging at anikalacerte.com now, come join me!

I have started blogging on my website anikalacerte.com, so have decided to stop blogging here. I'd love for you to join me!

Cheers!
Anika

involve

Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.

Benjamin Franklin

spring

No matter how long the winter, spring is sure to follow.

Proverb

beauty

She walks in beauty, like the night
  Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that 's best of dark and bright
  Meet in her aspect and her eyes

Lord Byron

spring

It's spring fever. That is what the name of it is. And when you've got it, you want - oh, you don't quite know what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so!

Mark Twain

infinite

Silently, one by one, in the infinite meadows of heaven,
Blossomed the lovely stars, the forget-me-nots of the angels.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

excursion

The excursion is the same when you go looking for your sorrow as when you go looking for your joy.

Eudora Welty

moments

Why hadn't I realized that joy was right in the middle of life, unlocked in the moments? Where did I think it should be? After all, it's only moments that make up a life.

Ann Voskamp

folks

Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.

Abraham Lincoln

joy

Joy does not simply happen to us. We have to choose joy and keep choosing it every day.

Henri Nouwen

satisfactory

36 satisfactory exposures on a roll means a photographer is not trying anything new.

Freeman Patterson

illuminated

In a futile attempt to erase our past, we deprive the community of our healing gift. If we conceal our wounds out of fear and shame, our inner darkness can neither be illuminated nor become a light for others.

Brennan Manning
(Abba's Child: The Cry of the Heart for Intimate Belonging)

litmus

The litmus test of our love for God is our love of neighbor.

Brennan Manning 
(The Wisdom of Tenderness: What Happens When God's Fierce Mercy Transforms Our Lives)

growing food

When did we become so disconnected from our own being, our own humanity, that growing food for our own bodies, for our very survival, became an act for the intellectually ignorant?

Ann Voskamp

now

Life is only all our moments slipped on in a row, one after the other — and if you turn slow in the light, the moments might shine translucent and the surprise of it catches you and releases you and it is what you always hoped and always knew. There is mystery and glory in every now.

Ann Voskamp

ordinary

The true artist enters into work of Father and makes the ordinary material of the world new.

Ann Voskamp

thirsty

O God, I have tasted of Thy goodness, and it has both satisfied me

and made me thirsty for more.

I am painfully conscious of my need for further grace.

I am ashamed of my lack of desire.

O God, the Triune God, I want to want Thee;

I long to be filled with longing;

I thirst to be made more thirsty.

A.W. Tozer

dust police

There are no dust police.

No smudge cops, no laundry laws, no fridge patrol.

Ann Voskamp

bare beauty

The garden smells pungent and green and alive. The light’s warm. The loamy tilth of the soil lies loose, open, expectant. I walk the rows and all the weight of everything falls away and I know the the bare beauty of who He made me to be.

Ann Voskamp

a thousand

Egyptians have fifty words for sand, and Eskimos, a hundred for snow.

How to find a thousand words for the joy of all this grace we walk in?

Ann Voskamp

green space

God gives green space to the Mamas needing heart space.
Ann Voskamp

prayers

The prayers we weave into the matching of socks, the stirring of oatmeal, the reading of stories, they survive fire.
Ann Voskamp

kindness

Ours are the hands through which he works
Ours are the feet on which he moves
Ours are the voices through which he speaks
To this world with kindness

Written by Brian McLaren
Performed by Steve Bell

hurry

On every level of life, from housework to heights of prayer, in all judgement and effort to get things done, hurry and impatience are sure marks of the amateur.
Ann Voskamp

beauty

I want to see beauty. In the ugly, in the sink, in the suffering, in the daily, in all the days before I die, the moments before I sleep."
Ann Voskamp

time

They say time is money, but that's not true. Time is life. And if I want the fullest life, I need to find fullest time... the busyness of your life leaving little room for the source of your life... 

God gives us time. And who has time for God? 

Which makes no sense.

Ann Voskamp

vision

Before you begin a thing, remind yourself that difficulties and delays quite impossible to foresee are ahead. If you could see them clearly, naturally you could do a great deal to get rid of them but you can't. You can only see one thing clearly and that is your goal. Form a mental vision of that and cling to it through thick and thin.
Kathleen Norris

altered

For grace to be grace, it must give us things we didn't know we needed and take us places where we didn't know we didn't want to go. As we stumble through the crazily altered landscape of our lives, we find that God is enjoying our attention as never before.
Kathleen Norris (Acedia & Me: A Marriage, Monks, and a Writer's Life)

ordinary

The Christian religion asks us to put our trust not in ideas, and certainly not in ideologies, but in a God Who was vulnerable enough to become human and die, and Who desires to be present to us in our ordinary circumstances.
Kathleen Norris

made-to-order

If grace is so wonderful, why do we have such difficulty recognizing and accepting it? Maybe it's because grace is not gentle or made-to-order. It often comes disguised as loss, or failure, or unwelcome change.
Kathleen Norris

changed

Prayer is not asking for what you think you want, but asking to be changed in ways you can't imagine.
Kathleen Norris

rewritten

As gentle as feathers
The snow piles high
Our world gets rewritten and retraced every time
Like fresh plates and clean slates
Our future is white
New Years resolutions are reset tonight


Lyrics by Sleeping At Last - Snow

trust

When a train goes through a tunnel and it gets dark, you don't throw away the ticket and jump off. You sit still and trust the engineer.

Corrie ten Boom

dust

Hope is springing up from this old ground
Out of chaos life is being found in You

You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of the dust
You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of us

Lyrics by Gungor - from You Make Beautiful Things

poignant

If you're listening, if you're awake to the poignant beauty of the world, your heart breaks regularly. In fact, your heart is made to break, it's purpose is to burst open again and again so that it can hold evermore wonder.
Andrew Harvey

free-form

There is something beautiful about a billion stars held steady by a God who knows what He is doing. (They hang there, the stars, like notes on a page of music, free-form verse, silent mysteries swirling in the blue like jazz.)
Donald Miller

ghosts

The branches have traded
Their leaves for white sleeves
All warm blooded creatures make ghosts as they breathe
Scarves are wrapped tightly like gifts under trees

Lyrics by Sleeping At Last - Snow

counts

It is not my ability, but my response to God’s ability, that counts.
Corrie Ten Boom

whirling

Worry is a cycle of inefficient thoughts whirling around a center of fear.
Corrie Ten Boom

temperature

Forgiveness is an act of the will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart.
Corrie Ten Boom

nothing

My deepest awareness of myself is that I am deeply loved by Jesus Christ and I have done nothing to earn it or deserve it.
Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel

heed

Two types of voices command your attention today. Negative ones fill your mind with doubt, bitterness, and fear. Positive ones purvey hope and strength. Which one will you choose to heed?
Max Lucado

assembly-line

You weren't an accident. You weren't mass produced. You aren't an assembly-line product. You were deliberately planned, specifically gifted, and lovingly positioned on the Earth by the Master Craftsman.
Max Lucado

lightly

Hold everything in your hands lightly, otherwise it hurts when God pries your fingers open.
Corrie ten Boom

prisoner

Forgiveness is unlocking the door to set someone free realizing you were a prisoner.
Max Lucado

gifts

Envy comes from people's ignorance of, or lack of belief in, their own gifts.
Jean Vanier

winter: a slideshow

I recommend playing the Sleeping At Last song, Snow, while watching this slideshow.

special

Remember, you are special because I made you. And I don't make mistakes.
Max Lucado