chased by grace and other randomosity

I'm sitting outside on the front porch, watching the dragonflies circle, admiring the morning sunshine, feeling the Texas balminess in the palms of my hands, drinking green tea, and generally gleefully procrastinating studying for my CLEP test tomorrow.  It's College Composition, and will require two timed essays.  Which means I have to write lots of practice essays about fairly pointless things.  I don't want to write anymore until the test, and I am trying to tell myself that I probably don't need to.  But, I probably do.  I am of the writing tribe that likes to type quickly, but stop often.  Just to think and ponder and look off into the distance for a bit.  And then after I write, I prune and tweak to my hearts content.  That is therapy, but it is not a remarkably quick process.  It is certainly not the sort of process that will get you through a College Comp test with any sort of passing grade.  And so, I have now written myself into thinking that I should at least write one more essay, at least before the day is over with.  And study for the question portion of the test... there is that too...

And in the midst of it all, I hope that I am doing the right thing in pursuing this degree anyway.. I hope that I did not misundertand the direction I was to take... I wonder this, and then I wonder that, and then I feel the icy fingers of fear grip my soul, and then I pry them off with trust, and then I wonder why so many emotions have to encircle the soul like the rings surround Saturn.  Emotions are odd things.

Yet, in the midst of everything, heavy on my mind is to be intentional to choose joy and thankfulness.  I stumbled upon this blog post last night... it hit the spot, so to speak.  That part of the soul that gets weary sometimes... and needs to be reminded about the goodness and mercy of the Lord.

Your whole life can feel like you are running for your very life, like you are trying to out run a tsunami of stress.
Trying to stay ahead of everything that’s nipping hard at your heels. Whole decades can be marked by exhaustion.

.....you can think goodness and mercy just follow you, but the Hebrew word for ‘follow’ is ‘radaph’ and it means to “to pursue, to run after, to chase” or, quite literally, “to hunt you down”. 

  And I found myself this morning sitting and smiling hard and tickled pink over the simple joyful fact that I have arms and legs that work, when so many don't.  Such a gift... so many gifts.  They are all around us.  I am chased by grace today... what a blessing.