I’m sitting in the lady den watching the sun getting ready to roll down the horizon. She’s dressed in a gown of raspberry pink, peach taffeta, sparkling in her own glow. On either side of her, low clouds of pale blueberry and vanilla set the stage for the sunset pageant. As the sun walks down the skyline, the satin train of her gown fans across the horizon in wildfire reds and oranges, making the bare old oak tree limbs blackish silhouettes. When she finally settles for the night and tucks her train in under the horizon, Mother Nature paints the sky a pale raspberry, gradually becoming a blushing rose as the night’s gleaming settles.

Father Sky leans down from his pink sky canopy and kisses the sun goodnight, turns off the day’s light, and welcomes the night that comes alive with his placement of the glowing moon and the twinkling stars. “We sleep but the looming of life never stops and the pattern which was weaving when the sun went down is weaving when it comes up tomorrow,” Henry Ward Beecher, a favorite quote of mine. I wait all day for sunset and I’m never disappointed watching the pageant of the setting sun with all of Mother Nature’s beautiful watercolors. Seeing color is really a gift from God. Can’t imagine life in a black and white landscape. How sad to be color blind.

Got hopes of a few flakes of snow this week. Don’t want things to ice and freeze over and cause problems and accidents but a snow flurry will lift my spirits and put a big happy smile on my face. Snowflakes begin when extremely cold water freezes onto pollen or a dust particle and forms an ice crystal. If all the cold rain needs is dust, my house should prepare for a blizzard! One of my friends in South Dakota is milking her cow Posey in -25 degrees! Bless her cheerful faithfulness! I loved her blog today about her cold weather experiences.

Love the total quietness of the day when it snows. It’s so quiet in the yard, the snow softly falling and gathering on the trees and yards and roofs. A great description — “The snow fell as soft as a poet’s tears,” Kevin Ansbrow. I think the beauty of being alive on a beautiful day can bring poet tears. My friend in Minnesota took a photo of frozen trees along a snowy shore and captured the loneliness of a cold winter day perfectly. Snowy days are lonely and quiet. Did a little research and learned when a blanket of fresh snow covers the landscape it absorbs sound waves making it seem quieter outside.

I hear the night’s lonely train whistle echoing down the metal tracks, moaning in time to the clickety clackety of the metal wheels on the steel railroad rails. Trains sound sad at night, I imagine then wailing for the lost love of their cabooses. Loneliness is such an overwhelming sense of being lost and alone. We all crave human contact but we can be lonely in a crowd of people and we can be isolated in our families. Psalm 34:18 reads, “The Lord is close to the broken-hearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.”

We all suffer broken hearts and lose our breath when life punches us in the guts. I believe God is always besides us, holding us till our hearts are mended, giving us breaths of fresh air when we need them. We have to ask God through our prayers for what we need. God wants us to ask for help because he is our Heavenly Father. No want or need is too trivial for our prayers. “Ask and you will receive, so that your joy will be the fullest joy,” John 16:24.

God wants us to lead a life full of joy. He wants us, his children, to live happy lives but we have to put God first in our lives and lead a life of Christian example, bringing others to Christ through our words and deeds. We have to be willing to trust God, to be obedient in following the path God chooses for us, to find true happiness.

“Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace, and gratitude.” — Dennis Waitley