Giggles Caught in Carpet

I want to lock up evenings like these in my memory for the times when I can't remember happiness. As per usual, us three girls, my mom, my sister, and I made dinner and watched a murder mystery movie together. Netflix kept buffering, but we falteringly made it through. Us girls curled up on the couch with our afghans, and my mom in her chair. We suggested various theories and were startled (or horrified) by shocking plot twists. In the end when it was all solved, the night air had grown chilly outside the windows, and our heartbeats started slowing down. She beat me on the word game, and I added to make her word doughboy. My restless legs made me squirm and move to the floor. It's hard but so comfortable. Giggles escaped from between my teeth, and we laughed at my silliness. It's hard to believe that six months from now my pretty sister will be married and moved. It seems like yesterday that we were little girls, and yet, like an old picture, it's faded and torn at the edges. I wanted to stay sprawled out on the floor, giggles reverberating through my head, but she turned the lights out, and if I didn't get up, I'd fall asleep. So I put my dishes away and went out to close in the chickens. Today the guys from Anvil came to set the posts for our new fence. With our backyard one with the neighbor's, and all the trees gone, it seems rather like that old backyard that I carry in my memories now. The huge pine, the big yard, the full garden...just memories now. The metal of the gate clanged like the old dog kennel and all the times I would let Doogie out, rub his floppy hound ears, smile at his exuberance to get out to go sleep in the yard. He's buried there now; I hope the new people won't inadvertently dig up his bones, poor puppy. All those memories from just a wide open space. I looked up to see the stars forming loose constellations in the sky above my head. A light cloud layer made them hazy, but still I watched. Such a pretty picture, those stars. Tiny points of light in such a dark world; such a dark night. I wonder if that's what I should be here tonight--a spark of light in a dark world. Such I should be every waking moment, and though it doesn't seem possible, even when I sleep. How can who I am, who God has made me into, affect the world for good unless I live out that goodness? If I dabble here and there in sin--saying yes to little "pleasures" that I could try to justify all day long--my testimony is ruined, my relationship with my Savior tarnished, my own soul blotched and stained. So many pairs of eyes watch me, even when I'm feeling all alone, and if such is the case, how can I let myself go again and blatantly say no to what I know is right. I shouldn't; I can't. Oh God, my God, earnestly will I seek You. Guard Your little child, and teach me to walk in Your footsteps day by day. Teach me to daily deny myself, take up my cross, and follow Thee.