The Chronicles of Janie

"Your problem is not the first fifteen minutes of the day. It's the next twenty-three hours and forty-five minutes. You must arrange your days so that you are experiencing total contentment, joy, and confidence in your everyday life with God."  - Dallas Willard, as quoted in the book Soul Keeping, by John Ortberg My image I have recently begun to rethink my quiet times; Precious morning hours, when the house is still and the sun not yet risen and the coffee sends out delicious steam... When I wander the chilly, twilit rooms with quiet song and prayer flowing freely in the silence... When I scribble down careful poem-prayers in an effort to understand my own wayward thoughts... When the Bible lies open - English on one side, Portuguese on the other - and I marvel at the ancient words that are just as new and fresh as if they'd been penned yesterday... I no longer consider these hours as the one , the only , the quiet time (!), snatched from the j...

Have I actually been here for seven months? It seems like forever, or no time at all. What it doesn't feel like is what it is: over half a year (just that little, just that much) spent in a new place. But is it really a new place? How can it be, when so many things feel so familiar? There's a part of me that fails to recognize how exotic my life - when viewed through the eyes of most of my readers - might seem. It's only when I contemplate returning home (home? Where is that, exactly?) that I realize this life has not always been, nor will it always be, as it is now. Maybe I won't always go grocery shopping in labyrinthine markets, where some of the vendors know us by sight and throw in extra produce for free. Maybe there will come a day when crossing the road won't be an adventure of epic proportions. When almost getting hit by a car is actually a big deal again. Where a healthy prayer life can be viewed as an extra, instead of an essen...