January is one of my favorite months.  It’s a month where I set aside time to be intentional, to set goals, to plan my year, and to identify what I want this year to be about.  It completely feeds my organizational self and I enjoy the fruit I see each year from setting aside this time.  I will share more about my intentions in later posts.  But for now, here is my month in review via photos, quotes and music.

We were still in Vegas when January started and we enjoyed 40 degree weather with a dip in the heated pool and jacuzzi.

We loved hiking the Red Rocks.  (It was still cold.)

We ran into this beautiful Friesian Horse, Crue, in a parking lot.  He had just had an audition in the snow for a Michael Bay movie.  What a beauty!

We threw a Kick-Up Dinner for Dennis’ work.  With some help of Shannon and Elisabeth, we created this lovely table.

I love winter sunsets.  This picture doesn’t do it justice.

I ended the month with a fabulous date with my favorite under 5-foot guy at a favorite haunt, Grounds, in our old neighbor.

Quotes Worth Remembering:

At times the strength of spiritual community lies in the love of people who refrain from getting caught in the trap of trying to fix everything for us, who pray for us and allow us the pain of our wilderness, our wants, so that we may be more deeply grounded in God.           — Rosemary Dougherty

With silence only as their benediction,

God’s angels come — where in the shadow of great affliction,

The soul sits dumb…

–John Greenleaf Whittier, from a letter to a friend on the death of his sister

“No,” I tell him.  “I don’t want to know anything more than I know now.  No.  I don’t want to know.  I already know too much.”

“I disagree with you there, Annie, Blumenfeld says softly.  “Truths about people are never too much.”                                                                                                                                                                                        — A Shining Affliction, Annie G. Rogers

“What has been wounded in a relationship, must be, after all, healed in a relationship….She left you without ever recognizing you.  That’s not a goodbye, Annie; it’s just leaving…..I feel the largeness of grief, how grief will not let you hide from the awareness of time passing and death, or from life itself, going on in all its unexpected ways.”                                                                                                                                                                                                 — A Shining Affliction, Annie G. Rogers

“When it comes to love, there is room for so much and so many different kinds.  The heart is capable of expanding far beyond what we can ever imagine if only we will allow it….There will always be things greater than we can ever comprehend that can come into our lives at any moment.”                                        — The Cellar, Katherine Lo

“Accepting truth was like removing a Band-Aid: at first it was painful, then it left a red mark and some of that gray sticky gunk that you had to scrape off” (p. 230) ……. “Jesus hung there, staring at me in all His agony, and I suddenly understood something:  Everyone suffered…But it was more than that that.  Sometimes we had to walk through the pain alone.  I looked back at a picture on the wall, the one where a bystander helped Jesus carry the cross.  Sometimes we had others to help us along the way.” (p. 233)

— Out of Reach by Carrie Arcos

“God is infinitely patient.  He will not push himself into our lives.  He knows the greatest thing he has given us is our freedom.  If we want habitually, even exclusively, to operate from the level of our own reason, he will respectfully keep silent.  We can fill ourselves with our own thoughts, ideas, images, and feelings.  He will not interfere.  But if we invite him with attention, opening the inner spaces with silence, he will speak to our souls, not in words or concepts, but in the mysterious way that Love expresses itself — by presence.”

— M. Basil Pennington, Centered Living

“‘The greatest sources of our suffering are the lies we tell ourselves.’ (p.11)…Imagination gives us the opportunity to envision new possibilities — it is an essential launchpad for making our hopes come true.  It fires our creativity, relieves our boredom, alleviates our pain, enhances our pleasure, and enriches our most intimate relationships. (p. 17)….Healing, he told us, depends on existential knowledge: You can be fully in charge of your life only if you can acknowledge the reality of your body, in all its visceral dimensions. (p. 27)”                                  — B. Van Der Kolk, The Body Keeps The Score

Songs on Repeat Mode in January:

Give me a Song by Will Reagan

Set a Fire by Will Reagan

Losing Your Memory by Ryan Star

Ghost by Ella Henderson

Where the Island Ends by Ryan Star

May peace and joy follow you into February.