I want to die on a day like today.

today is perfect and exactly the sort of day on which I want to die.

It's flawlessly rainy, and gray, and cold, and lovely. It requires finding the softest blanket, wrapping yourself in it to traipse down the stairs and make a pot of coffee, carrying that cup of life-giving juice with both your hands (it seems to warm your soul at the same time), and snuggling back under the covers with only your head peeking out to watch a Christmas movie on netflix- emerging only to guzzle down another mouthful of coffee.

Doesn't that sound like the best sort of day on which one might die? Not that I'm sitting around planning my death, but I'd be incredibly happy if I got to die on a day as glorious as this one.

It's the type of day my anglophile heart loves best- the type of day that reminds you of be-puddled London streets and heads ducked down as pedestrians walk across the zebra crossing (crosswalk with stripes painted on the road, for all you Americans that think that actually refers to a place zebras can cross the road. hint: it isn't for zebras).
The kind of day you don't mind driving slower and walking slower and breathing slower because something about life just seems more peaceful and manageable. Something makes you feel like you should be taking long, melancholy walks through the rain and writing blatantly honest love letters (the general kind to humans you love un-romantically) and jumping in puddles and laying in your bed clutching your old memories so tight they're suffocating you and feeling a plethora of emotions all at once.

I guess that's why it's my favorite kind of day, because I'm really good at feeling things. (insert reference to her own emotional basketcase-ness HERE).

Messiness. It's a day of messiness. The pinpoint of that description for this day settles it all down and clarifies even the foggiest of thoughts that drift like misty rain my windshield wipers can't quite keep up with.
Most people use these days as excuses to stay inside and not go out for anything. "It's too messy", my dad always says. The messy rain makes the roads incredibly slick and the possibility of hydroplaning gets obnoxiously high, even for people who are very different from me and like to go the speed limit (or slower) when it's raining. Not to mention the getting in and out of your car in the rain- that is the only thing I cannot stand about rain. You try so hard to stay dry, you figure out these little umbrella maneuvers to keep you as dry as possible when opening and closing the car door... but you always get sprinkled on. The messiness is unavoidable.

Other people don't like the messiness. Especially not messiness in life and relationships and events.
Well, I thrive off of it.
I, like the aforementioned well-missed London, am a city of constantly changing chaos and ever-present messiness that somehow finds consistent order within that.

And today in my chaos and messiness, and in the messy perfection of the day, He (my Jesus) found order. Maybe he created it, I don't know. But I looked in my heart and all the sudden I saw consistency of mind and spirit that has been absent for so very long. It came on the wings of His whisper: "I have not forgotten you."
That was really all I needed, but He kept going.
"My promises are still unfulfilled but still living, and here I hold them up for you to see and remember. I have not forgotten you. I have not forgotten your heart and its longings. I will not abandon you."

Within me, it was like that scene in Mary Poppins where they start snapping and all the toys just start going back to their places.
God's whispers were the snaps. And all my doubts and fears were going back to their places (somewhere outside of my mind, I don't really know where they go) and letting the Tetris pieces fall into their place perfectly to leave an ordered, sound mind, clinging with faith to His promises and whispers.
I was driving, as I am when most of God's most obvious whispers come to my little ear.

He replayed my day for me:
this weather.
sleeping in.
coffee (three cups of it, and with peppermint mocha creamer to boot!)
a weird semi-english breakfast
a day-long conversation about Doctor Who
a British Christmas movie (that turned out to be rather awful, but HEY, London at Christmastime)
Wellies

it was like my own little day in London.
I remembered how when I first stepped outside this morning, I stood on my doorstep under my holey little awning with the rain pattering all around and my breath making white steamy swirls around me, and I cried. I just stood there and slowly surveyed what was in front of me and I cried. He had given me London, for a day.
Just to remind me that He's not done with it.
Just to remind me that though that dream is dead, it is soon to come back to life.
Just to remind me that after the winter comes the spring.

Just to say, "Hey. I love you. Here's a little something I made you, just because."
On this day that would be one so perfect to die on, He reminded me that He's given me life, abundant life, and that He's giving His promises life- that in Him they find their Yes and Amen- eventually.