Lately I've been listening to the very excellent Sonship series by Pastor Barry Henning of New City Fellowship in St. Louis, Missouri (scroll down nearly to end of page, second-to-last item).

While I was listening, something clicked. A perennial Christian problem is beginning the Christian life by grace (i.e., recognizing that it's solely by an undeserved gift of God that we receive salvation and all its blessings, based completely on what Jesus has done and not anything we've merited); but then, at some point, slipping back into living by works (i.e., believing that our acceptance with God and living the Christian life depends on our own efforts at obedience).

The other day, I was talking with my mom on the phone. We chat every week or two, and she fills me in on the family news.

This time, one of her major news items was that my dad had hit a deer with his truck. Thankfully, the damage wasn't severe, just some denting to the grill and a loosening of the front lights.

I couldn't bring myself to ask. But she saved me the trouble.

"He took it to the processor, but we don't know how much meat we'll get out of it. The guy said that it looked pretty much undamaged, but they can't tell till they take the skin off."

Roadkill. As viable food source. Sometimes the wonderful oddity of the life I've come from strikes me.

What struck me even more, though, was the fact that this not only seemed perfectly normal to me, but totally sensible. After all, why pass up an entire deer's worth of meat, simply because it was killed by a truck instead of a bullet?

Makes sense, right?

Cats have always been my very best friends. They were my earliest friends, and for much of my life, my only ones. They’ve also been the ones to most poignantly break my heart. My life has been shaped by both their love and their sorrow.

Cats have been part of my existence from almost before I can remember. The first cat I owned came to us in a roundabout way: as gouges out of a loaf of bread.

I'm writing more on principle than anything else, partly to stave off boredom and attempt to do something more creative and useful than I might otherwise be doing.

Life has settled into a pretty quiet and steady rhythm. I realized the other day that for the first time in years, I feel at home where I am living. I like my house and I like being here, feel comfortable and spread out, like I own the place, don't feel a need to hide away or to be out as much as possible. That's a new thing and I'm enjoying it.

Anyone who knows me, knows that I hate the cold. The onset of winter invariably has me grumbling profusely, hiding inside, and piling on ridiculous numbers of thermal layers before heading outside at all.

Just a few years ago, the idea of actually running outside in winter weather would have had me shivering and horrified. Actually, the idea of running at all would have had the same effect.