New Light

Before we moved here, this silly Texan thought the hardest part about living in Alaska would be the cold. But as it turns out, living in the cold has been surprising bearable. Ask any Alaskan and they'll tell you that there really is no bad weather, just bad gear.

No, the hardest part about living in Alaska has been dealing with the crazy darkness.

Around mid-October, daylight hours began growing noticeably shorter. The sun wouldn't rise until mid-morning, barely cresting above the horizon, and then it would completely vanish again by the middle of the afternoon. On the day of the winter solstice, I didn't see the sun until 11 AM. It barely warmed our -23 degree sky, and then it went back down again at 2:40 PM.
I'm absolutely certain that if twinkle lights would not have been popularized for Christmastime, Alaskans would have made them a thing anyway. The snow sparkles here out of pure necessity. We need all the light we can get.

Even now that the shortest day of the winter season is behind me, I still have quite a ways to go before things return to "normal." Today the sun rose at 10:30 and will set at 3:15. We will earn about five minutes of sunlight back every day, which feels painfully slow--even more so now that most of the Christmas-y twinkle lights are down.

The lack of sunshine has been a big player in my life lately. The darkness has taken a toll on my motivation, my energy, and my mood. It's actually quite hard to make your body work when the sun does not. And even though I make a deliberate effort to move and get out and about each day, I can feel the draining impact that the dark has on me.
We wake up to "natural light" alarm clocks so that our bodies are cued when it's time to rise. We take vitamin D supplements every morning. We sit in front of our light therapy boxes every day. But all of those things are lesser substitutes for the thing we are missing the most:
Sweet, sweet sunshine--and perhaps even a humid 90 degree day if you are a silly Texan.


Because of my pining, watching for the sunrise has become a bit of a daily ritual for me here. And fortunately for me, Alaskan sunrises never seem disappoint:

And these are just stinky camera phone pictures, y'all! It's truly like looking at massive watercolor paintings...

Even though I have been awake for hours before these sunrises happen---even though I have taken all of my fake-sun supplements, and gotten the kids to school, and squeezed in a workout, and knocked out some errands, *or sometimes have started making my lunch!!* (it really is so, so crazy)---my day suddenly starts over again once I see the light.
Living like this for the past several months has taught me a couple things.

Firstly, and perhaps most importantly, I've learned that there is no substitution for the true light.
There are lots of tips, tricks, and gadgets on the market for us up here in the arctic that claim to help combat the darkness, but they all pale in comparison to the real thing. There is no amount of exercise, no amount of vitamins, no amount of twinkle lights that do the work the sun was made to do. And friends, since Jesus is the Light (John 8:12), we'd do really well to remember that there is no substitution for Him. No amount of good works, no amount of followers, no amount of "likes." No powers, no professions, no self-help scenarios. Nothing on this earth can do the work that the Son was made to do.

Secondly, I've learned how important it is to relish the new starts that the light brings.
Before the sun rises here, I feel a bit like a zombie. I drink the coffee and I do the things, but I do them reeeeeaally slowly. (And probably without brains.) But I'm like a completely new woman when the sun comes out. A new day literally dawns for me, even though it's midday!
Light is rejuvenating. It wakes us up. It helps us see. It warms us. It powers us. Light makes things begin again.
Many of us get spun up around this time about a new year, but there really is something so lovely and important about each new day.
If you feel like your year is already off on the wrong foot, find comfort in this new day. And if you feel like you didn't start the day off right, take comfort in our gracious God who makes a sunrises in the middle of the day!!
And even then, He gives a new hour. He gives a new minute. He gives a new breath.
Notice it, and begin again.

"Those who live at the ends of the earth
stand in awe of your wonders.
From where the sun rises to where it sets,
you inspire shouts of joy." (Psalm 65:8)

Now if you will excuse me, I have a sunrise to catch ;)

Shaken

Well folks, today I experienced my very first earthquake.
And I have to admit, I’m still pretty shook up about it.

We are several hours north of Anchorage, but we experienced tremors from their 7.0 magnitude quake. My experience lasted about two minutes in real life---but it felt like 272 minutes in the moment. As most of you could probably guess, I handled it with exactly no chill.

I was sitting on a backless bar stool at my kitchen counter doing my daily Bible study. I suddenly felt really, really dizzy. I thought I was being struck with vertigo. I lifted the Bible from the counter and held it up in front of me so I wouldn’t have to look down to read. I was reading from Psalm 62:

“Truly my soul finds rest in God; my salvation comes from Him. Truly He is my rock and my salvation; He is my fortress, I will never be shaken.”(v1-2)

All at once it dawned on me that I wasn’t dizzy. I was shaking.


Here’s how the whole thing went down in my brain:

-I put the Bible down and stood up. Y’all, I kid you not--after reading that verse, I could have sworn the LORD was returning right then and there!! I think I actually said the words “Help me, Jesus!” out loud.

-I kind of ran around my house from corner to corner. Apparently I should have listened better to what my children do during earthquake drills in school…

-My children!!! Oh my goodness! My children aren’t with me!!! *activate crazed, hyper-protective parent* Mentally talk myself out of running to/calling school during an active earthquake…

-Earthquake! I’m STILL shaking. Are things falling? Let me assess. No. Nothing falling, but blinds and hanging objects are swaying really heavily side to side. Ugh, so am I…

-I feel awful. I get motion sick just from riding on an elevator these days. I was not built for earthquakes…

-Earthquake! Oh my goodness! How is this still happening?! This never would have happened in Texas. Texas just has tornadoes. Tornadoes are way easier than earthquakes. They come with warnings and sirens and shelters. I miss Texas. And tornadoes. (Okay, maybe not tornadoes.)...

-My dog always hides in the bathroom in tornadoes. Am I supposed to hide somewhere? Yes! Under a table! (I knew I listened to my kids when they told me things!!!)…

-Oooh, I feel sick. I’m not going to be able to squeeze myself under a table right now. Maybe I’ll find the dogs and hide with them…

-Locate dogs. (They were napping on the rug.)

-Phone rings. It’s my husband. Immediately feel validated that I wanted to call school ;)

-Tremors settle while we’re on the phone. Assure each other we’re okay. Tell husband I thought Jesus was coming. Laugh-cry a little.

-Text my mom.

-Receive alert from weather app---hmmm. Not helpful.

-Look at the “Alaska Bucket List” that the school counselor gave to my children and lament to myself that she included an earthquake box to check off.

-Put the dang checkmark on the stupid box.



After I settled my heart and my brain a little bit, I climbed back onto the (newly inadequate) back-less bar stool and looked at the verse I was reading when my world started to rattle.

“Truly He is my rock and my salvation; He is my fortress, I will never be shaken.”

Y’all, nothing on this earth is as secure as we think it is. We build skyscrapers up from the ground never stopping to think that they are only held up by a constantly shifting, thin layer of rock. I am certainly grateful for the roof over my head, but I was extra aware today that if the ground shook it hard enough, all of the walls around me would crumble. The feeling of the earth swaying side to side was so surreal, I recognized—maybe even for the first time—that the very ground we walk on can fail beneath our feet. The earth hangs on nothing, (Job 26) and one day it will all pass away (Matt. 24).

We have one sure, solid foundation.
One way to salvation.
One everlasting, never-failing, absolute hope.

One thing that holds us together when everything else is shaking.


I feel silly about how scattered I was in the midst of my first earthquake. But I also feel really settled.
God knew I needed that Bible in my hand when the tremors hit. He knew the verse I needed to see. He heard me call for His help. He knew I was going to be a fool and stand under a ceiling fan when I should have been under a table. And He held me together when everything around me felt unsteady.

That’s who He is. That’s what He does.
And that kind of revelation shakes everything up for me in a much better way.

“Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe.” (Hebrews 12:38)

Chasing Lights

When my husband first received orders to move to Alaska, we thought we were heading to Anchorage.
We weren't.

Just three weeks before the moving company loaded everything we owned into large shipping crates, we discovered that we were actually heading to a small installation a little ways outside of the northernmost "city" in the interior. I cried.
No mountains. No ski resorts. No whales. No coastal winds saving me from crazy arctic temperatures. There wasn't even a Target.

The one thing we did gain from moving a bit further north was an eight month access pass to one of the great natural phenomenons of our skies--the Aurora Borealis. Apparently the show has been going on since August, but I only caught my first glimpse of it a couple weeks ago.

I kept running into a couple hangups whenever I would try to see it. For one, the Aurora often peaks around these parts in the middle of the night, and I love my sleep too much to waken. The sky might be awake, but this girl ain't. Secondly--and I'm not sure if y'all have heard this--Aurora displays take place outside, and it happens to be really, *really* cold here.
Pair those two things with the fact that you need just the right amount of solar activity in conjunction with a cloudless sky, the right elevation to keep trees from blocking your view, no lights at all, and constant watch (sometimes the lights will be out for hours, but sometimes just a few minutes at a time)... then you start to understand why people will pay bookoos of their hard-earned dollars to sleep in a remote hotel room with a specialty wake-up call if the lights happen to be out.
I'm not that fancy.

One clear, cold Saturday night, my family piled into my husband's pickup truck, we drove to the top of a hill at midnight, and we waited...
And we watched...
And we waited some more...

Finally, we saw it! Clear as day, a rippling streak illuminated the sky and spiraled across it. I could see the line "light up" at one end, and then it rose in columns. It was beautiful. It was big. It was definitely the northern lights.

But it wasn't green.

I was so confused. Every photo I had ever seen of the lights was a bright, neon green light. What I was seeing looked a lot like an illuminated cloud. I kept thinking there was a pale green hue to it, but I couldn't tell if it was actually greenish or if I just really wanted it to be. My husband and I took our sleepy children out of the car and we "ooohed" and "aahed" together, then we hopped back into the truck and drove around to get different angles from other places we'd read were prime viewing spots. Everywhere we looked it was the same thing. Huge, dominating, bright white *with a hint of possibly imaginary pale green* lines of light across the sky.

What I was looking at was absolutely wondrous. It just wasn't the exact thing I was expecting, so it bothered me.

Later that next morning, my husband and I started doing some online research. Why weren't our lights green?
Friends, take a moment to do a quick Google image search:
Aurora Borealis eye vs picture

(Don't worry. I'll wait...)

Y'all! Do you see it? It's mostly a trick of the lens!!!
Not on purpose, of course. Something about the filters of the lens and the different exposures capture that vivid hue. It's accidental photo-shopping. Absolutely spectacular displays will show up with brighter colors, but more often than not, it appears to our naked eyes as a white or pale green light.

I was spinning! How this is not more common knowledge is crazy to me!!

But true to form, it all got me thinking...

Nothing about those pale green lights was anything other than stunningly beautiful. It was glorious, actually. That night the sky was so clear, I could see the Milky Way blending in with the brightest stars...and because apparently that wasn't pretty enough to knock me right over, these dancing swirls of light appeared. And what in the world did I do when immersed in such natural beauty??
I griped that they weren't green enough.

That is just plain discouraging. But if I'm honest with myself, I do that mess all the time--I'm doing it here and now!!

I photo-shopped up a beautiful picture of Alaska in my mind, and because the real deal is not the exact thing that I was expecting, I let it bother me.

I don't know if you're at all like me in this way, but maybe you are.

Maybe your degree didn't take you as far as you imagined it would. Maybe your job isn't as fulfilling as you dreamed it would be. Maybe your house isn't Pinterest-perfect. Parenthood isn't as constantly rewarding. Marriage is not as blissfully romantic. Maybe growing up just feels like getting old.

But does that mean none of these things are good? Are these things not still bright accomplishments, brilliant motivators, and spectacular blessings--just as they really are?

Friends, I believe that most of us are so busy chasing the brightest version of things that we forget to appreciate the raw, real beauty that is actually all around us. I'm sure if we took a moment to look through a truer lens, what we saw would be pretty enough to knock us right over.

Maybe all of those spectacular pictures we created of what things ought to look like are totally fake--hopes that we've filtered and exposed through the lenses of high expectations and time.

Let's set aside the images of what we hoped to see and focus instead on the lights that are right in front of us.
Because things don't have to be the very brightest for them to be beautiful just the same.