It was difficult to get out of bed this morning. Two of our bedroom walls and ceilings are being renovated so we were sleeping in the guest room. We got to bed late. Oh, I’m not sure why. Could have been the ball game, or the book I was reading, or quite possibly because we were trying to find our pajamas in the drawers that had been moved from their usual spot and piled in the back room. But the alarm let me know it was time to get up.

I met Sabina and now I want to be like Sabina.

This book opened a way for me to take a fresh look at my own faith, my own prayers, my own feelings of safety, and my own deeply felt compassion for the world.

If I was Sabina, how might I live out my faith?

And this much I know. I cannot carry my own heart. It is too full, heavy, broken, and complex. I need Someone bigger than I am to take care of it…to take care of me.

I wonder what I might find if I would only stop for a minute and be curious about my own reflection. What might I see? How would I feel about what I see? Would there be a nudge that something needs to change? What about God?

Chanting this nursery rhyme as a child, I never imagined that all these years later I would, in the middle of a cold dark morning, be blessed one more time by the God who hung that moon, keeps it on schedule, and (as a bonus) gives us unique ways to not take it for granted.

I can DRAW NEAR to him when I see that beautiful moon shining brightly in the dark blue early morning sky. I want to DRAW NEAR to him when I find myself worried about many things. When my feelings have been hurt or I have felt offended, I find him inviting me to run to him, to DRAW NEAR. I know he welcomes me when I feel angry or when anxieties threaten to overwhelm me.

How we think and how we talk to ourselves has everything to do with the house (the life) in which we reside. Our thoughts affect how we view ourselves and the world we live in, how we feel, interact and react. The "walls" of our interior life can be plastered with wallpaper made of thankfulness and joy, or, in contrast, posters of anger, fear, and bitterness.

Three years old, I found myself awake in the middle of the night. Not in my own room, I wanted to leave. But after walking around and around the room, searching with my little arms outstretched, the door just couldn’t be found! So I cried out. Immediately the hallway light came on and as I hurried to the top of the stairs, I discovered my dad running up the stairs to rescue me from the darkness.