Yesterday, our neighbors hung their twinkling lights on their front porch – the blazes of hunter orange speaking almost as much of the season as the lights themselves. 
Late into the dark last night, our other neighbors moved earth, making way for something – a house up the mountain perhaps.
Now, it’s quiet here on the mountain. Two crows galavant in the pasture. The bull next door is standing at attention. Meander and Philip are still tucked in upstairs, and Oscar, Emily, and I have claimed the couch . . . with Charlotte peeking a nervous nose in from time to time.
Yet, I find myself restless, eager to do. I’m reading for our barn to go up and for us to find out if we can build the lodge where we’d like. I want our chicken fence established, and our goat fence ready to go up in the spring.
Still, all of these things take time, and of late, our time has needed to be elsewhere – with family, on work projects, in book releases.
But today, we will frame our porch with the lights from our wedding, and we will leave our small Christmas tree glowing its fiber-optic gift all day. We will start a fire on the hill and burn some of the logs long-fallen on the road to the lodge. We will finish the plans for the chicken fence and begin to prep the inside with roosts. We will also rest.
It is Advent, the time of waiting. . . I am not good at waiting. Yet, there is gift in the between – a teaching of patience and trust . . . a reminder that things come as they are due and ready. A reminder that I am not in control . . . and that I do not want to be.
So here, in this quiet morning, where the bull still stands steady on the hillside, I wait . . for the noise to recommence and Meander to charge down the stairs, for Philip to rouse, and for the day to continue.
I sip my coffee and read Mother Earth News and celebrate the waiting . . . or at least try.