Yes, there is a yellow room. It is the smallest room in my small (not Tiny) house, and it used to be my bedroom. Mother had it painted yellow specially for me. Sadly I discovered after two years of quite serious sleep deprivation that it was not a place for real rest. Several factors were at fault but the worst is that the central AC unit is directly outside the window; in a climate that has about 9 months of summer weather every year, the unit is in near-constant use, and I just couldn't stand the noise. To save my sanity, a move to the pink room became an absolute necessity. Funny how the places that should be peaceful are sometimes not.
I left Daisy asleep on the bed in the pink room. And I sat in the basket chair in the yellow room in the morning sun thinking, resting, praying, planning. Quiet. I had made several decisions and was mentally forging ahead when I heard it: terrified crying. Daisy. She had woken alone. This frightens her dreadfully, and it always has. I found her sitting bolt upright, rigid, staring at something she couldn't see and didn't understand. She began to relax only when she realized I had come back into the room. I sat with her. She shoved her paw into my hand and pressed her head against my wrist for comfort.
Daisy is difficult. She is determined and demanding, and she bickers! She is the only cat I've ever argued with, and we argue pretty much daily. It's a surprising relationship but I'd choose her again; she's just right for me. I don't want an easy cat, and I chose Daisy (12 years ago this very week) because she was a tough nut to crack--three other people had adopted her previously and returned her as incorrigible. Well, she's still incorrigible but the problem those other people had was that they expected her to be a cat. And she is not a proper cat; Daisy appears to have been raised from birth by a dog. She was kept by someone who obviously tried very hard to do their best with her; such a person would never have willingly left her at the animal shelter. I can only assume that there must have been a death, and I can only wonder if that is the reason for Daisy's terrified cries when she wakes to find herself alone. Animals have their stresses and sorrows, and sometimes their rest is as disrupted as our own.
Rest. I haven't been able to sleep properly this past week. I've had the craziest fever nightmares and have woken many, many times every night. The moon is about to finish waning, always a time of disruption for me, and somehow I've gotten idea that the fever will end with the darkness of the moon. It sounds silly perhaps but my mother would have agreed with me on that. There are things outside our understanding that have an impact on our lives.
It's hard to be at rest when there is work to be done and no one but me to do it. It's hard to be at rest when illness attacks and the only way to battle back is slow. But just like Daisy trusts that I will make things okay by being present with her, we can trust our Heavenly Father to make things okay because he is always present with us. He never leaves us. He never gives up on us, not even when we give up on ourselves. He doesn't take away the trouble but he helps us to endure. He sees us through the restless times, and he encourages us to rest in him.
It's a beautiful day. God is so good.
Daisy has gone back to a peaceful sleep, surrounded by little rainbows cast from the sunshine though the crystals that hang in the window. And I am resting, too.
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