Drained, Not Drowned

Here is how I am feeling today:

I am trying to believe that if I'm drained, it means I'm not drowned, not flooded.  But goodness I am tired.

Yesterday was one of those trying days that helps me understand why ancient people might believe in evil spirits:  each hour brought a new piece of bad news, from the emergency surgery of a faculty member to people who were locked out of accounts to an online new student orientation with technical difficulties and mid-afternoon, my campus lost internet/server connection.

Some days, I just want to give up and go home.  I try to channel my inner Winston Churchill, but refusing to surrender doesn't mean I feel like I'm winning--or making any progress at all.

I continue to sketch each day as part of the Morning Watch broadcast that I'm doing for my church.  I am sketching as part of an online journaling group; some days I am staggered to think at how much our lives have changed since I signed up for this class.

Here's my favorite sketch of the week:

One of my co-journalers posted her picture of a tree with a knot on the trunk, which put me in mind of children's Easter eggs, where you look in a hole and you see a whole other world. That's what I tried to capture here, a mystical world in the knot hole of a tree.

I know that at some point I'll look back and see gifts from this time period.  Some of those gifts, like the sketching, I recognize right now.  Some I won't know for years.  Let me stay open to the gifts and the graces.