Falling into Grace

It's cold cool!

This morning I sat down with my coffee & the book of Ephesians and soaked in Autumn. Texas can have a pretty long fall season, actually. I remember Thanksgivings growing up where Autumn was slow in leaving & winter dragged her feet; thus, they were too warm for sweaters & jeans. (A fortunate thing, if you saw some of the matching sweater combos my mom had us wear back in the day.)

I'm more motivated to decorate for this season than most. Kyle & I are still in the stage where Christmas is at either parents, so any decorating outside of baking Christmas cookies.... well, there isn't really any decorating outside of baking Christmas cookies. (Sacrilege for some; but, friendly to our newly-married budget for us.) 

So I went to HEB yesterday for the first time in two weeks. Holding out until we were reduced to toast & questionable leftovers that had been forgotten in the back of the fridge because, though I love cooking & baking, grocery shopping in a college town is always a giant pain. 

Needless to say, my fall decorating started with the impulsive purchase of a cinderella pumpkin that is now awkwardly sitting on a trunk in our living room, because it is too big to go anywhere else. I'm still figuring out what to do with it. 

I was pretty proud of the centerpiece I came up with, though: 

Pretty simple, but for me this is about twenty million steps in a good direction. 

In college, out of the four girls who lived in the house, my level of domesticity was by far the lowest. Meals consisted of Rice-A-Roni & frozen peas; clean clothes were dumped in a pile & stayed there until I picked something up, wore it, and moved it to the "not clean anymore" pile; and Hobby Lobby might as well have been a curse word. 

I was pleasantly surprised when, after getting married, I had a better knack for domestic things than expected. My husband was probably more pleasantly surprised; especially when he found out I was, in fact, cleaner than him. A fact he somehow missed in college.  

Also, I have a post rolling around in my head that has something to do with grace, the fruit of self-control, & what completely surrendering to Christ really looks like. It may also have a hint of what being completely secure would actually do to me & how I want to look away when God turns my head toward injustices... but I'm so grateful He won't let me.

More later!