Today was my daughter’s first day of eighth grade.  When I picked her up from her CC Challenge B class, she greeted me with words that filled my heart with J-O-Y:

I LOVE CC!

So went Day 1, Week one of the thirty week program.  She’s especially excited about Latin.  I do believe my child will become a linguistic specialist working for the CIA or MI5 one day.  Hanging out with all the Challenge kids at lunch was another highlight of her day, as was working out the details of the costumes the kids plan to wear to the midnight premier of The Hobbit and a lively debate between the merits and pitfalls of The Hunger Games and Harry Potter.

Pixie hair made getting ready for school a cinch.  Wake up, get head wet, go:

Meanwhile, I’m savoring my way through Ann Voskamp’s best seller, One Thousand Gifts, and I am making my own list of blessings.  So far I have penned fifteen of them.  I’d like to go back through my photographs and use some of them on my list.  One of the reasons photography fills me with joy is because it allows me to truly SEE the world around me.  Often I am so busy and harried and hurried that I blow by the gifts God set in my path.  But when I have my camera in hand, my feet slow and my eyes become the lenses God intended them to be. I slow down, and I notice.

I’m mesmerized by the drop.  Hanging by a thread, the droplet reflects the hose’s promise and offers a respite of refreshment to the dried up grass clinging to the side of the spout.  Never before would I think to find beauty in a twisted up water hose…but there it is, waiting to be discovered. It reminds me of the Living Water Jesus offered to the woman arguing with him at the well…the kind of water that continually replenishes and refreshes dry, dusty souls.

Whether the judges at the state fair will see this drop the same way I do or not, I am still thrilled every time I see it.  It’s made my blessings list, along with some of these I penned:

…daughter spinning, spinning, spinning on skates

…rain-cooled August evening, snuggling with fleece

…gentle breezes are refreshing mint splashes cooling my face

…scarlet dragonflies hovering over still waters

…my hand warmly enveloped in hubby’s

Taken together, this day spells J-O-Y in all ways because I savor. I notice.  And love flows down like manna, pouring over my head and spilling wetly on the floor, refreshing my soul.