We released a podcast episode today over at By Design talking a little about my …
india trip – photo blog
the hubs
Eyes on Him
Keep your eyes on God. I’ve had someone ask me before what that really means. …
wrshp
THIS guy. I love him fiercely, and if you know him, you probably do too. …
thankful
this is the spot. we end up here (@ the grand lux cafe) whenever we’re …
simply tuesday
We celebrated our anniversary this weekend. It’s been eight years for us now. We didn’t do what people would normally think of for an anniversary…no fancy dinner, no big gifts or surprises, no night out on the town all done up in our rock star clothes. Instead we drove 11.5 hours to North Carolina for a book release party for an author I love. {insert crickets} This is where the awkward silence happens…where crickets chirp because no one really knows how to respond to that…lol.
Sounds fun, right? I’ve heard it a few times in the voices of friends and family…”so what are you doing exactly…what is this for? Is this a work thing? Did you stop anywhere else along the way? Did you go out to dinner?”Nope. None of those things. We ate fast food for most of the trip, and I wore the same clothes home that I wore there. {gasp!} But I tell you what my dear ones, it might have been the best anniversary weekend we’ve ever had. There were no expectations. No reasons to fuss. Just us, in a car, in our comfy clothes, singing a little Poison and having the best conversations about our dreams, our God, our smallness.
That’s a big part of the reason we made the trip to North Carolina. God’s been teaching us our smallness. It’s been unfolding for us over the last year or so. You know, thru life altering, soul shattering moments of the hard and the good and the every day. I think it’s fair to say we used to chase after life. It’s like we were trying to get there. Wherever “there” was. Because that’s where real life would start. Right? That’s when we’d feel full and accomplished and like we were ENOUGH.
But that way of thinking has been blown out of the water by ventilators and hospitals and heart defects. We don’t look too far ahead, we try not to chase life. We don’t always win that battle either. But like I’ve said before, we have these new eyes now. We see differently. We look at leaves on trees and shake our heads at their glory. We wear tool belts at work even when it’s not necessary…we take pictures of hard hats and steel mills because we know we might not always get to…we savor the opportunity to work hard. We’re present in the moment in ways we never were before. We pound our fists and raise our hands and sing to our God and know in 10 minutes we could be standing there in glory with Him…hands raised…forever.
Life is short. Shorter than we realized. It’s always been. We are a mist. MIST, people. The every day is a gift and there is so much there…so so much. You just have to slow your pace, open your hearts and look for it.
Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.James 4:14
And by the way, we’re not facing death. We’re not dying in 10 minutes, there’s nothing that serious going on. But that doesn’t mean we’re not living like it. It’s a small-moment perspective as Emily P. Freeman would say. One that might sound sad and dreary because it’s about being small and embracing it…but for us, it’s not like that. It’s more like the lottery. ? And guess what, we won! Yeah, we might be carrying around a bucket of the hard stuff, and it’s heavy…and more than a little annoying. But it pales in comparison to the sea of joy we experience loving the little things like trees and leaves and tool belts. Because really…life could be like it was before. Pretty. And easy. Derek could have a perfect heart and could be strong and run and push hard like he so badly wants to…but the holes would be in our souls then, not our bodies. We wouldn’t have these eyes. I choose these eyes. And I know he would too.So when I read a book like Simply Tuesday and am reminded to boast in my weaknesses and live small … it just makes sense to drive across the country to celebrate it. Emily’s words resonate with me. It’s pretty much what we’ve been living and breathing, but she connects the dots for us like we couldn’t have done on our own. One of my favorite parts of her book…
Jesus taught his disciples to pray for daily bread, the kind we can’t carry into tomorrow. Looking to the future may give meaning to my work, but I have to be careful not to look to the future to find meaning for my life. There is a daily-ness to my work, a small-moment perspective that whispers for me to connect with the work in my right-now hands, not because it’s going to become something Big and Important, but because Someone who is Big and Important is here, with me, in me, today.Emily P. Freeman
What we’ve been learning is that the package will never be complete my friends. The nice and tidy, money having, skinny life of our dreams will never make us whole. It fills our eyes, our pride, but it will never fill our souls. Our souls were made by God and for God. And THAT is what we long for. I am enough…Derek is enough…YOU are enough…because HE is more than enough. When the Father looks at me, He sees Christ. He sees perfection. I can rest there. We all can.
The truth is…we don’t need to get “there”…we can live free and full right here. With broken heart valves and all. We don’t know how many days we have on this earth. None of us do. All of our futures are unknown. So I say right here, wherever you are…look for the good. Look for the only real Good there is…look for GOD. And you’ll start finding joy in what you have, in where you are, with what’s right in front of you.
End rant. 🙂
Here are some pictures from my two North Carolina trips to the Nester’s Barn. One was for a Cozy Minimalist event The Nester was having…and the other to celebrate the release of Emily’s new book Simply Tuesday. And these two ladies are the real deal by the way. They are genuine and kind and crazy talented. They write and create and give glory to God.
{Prepare to swoon}
[supsystic-gallery id=3 position=center]
*photos by myself, my hubby, and fellow Cozy Minimalist’s Kirsten Thompson and MJ Taylor
never forget
The hubs and I went on a drive the other day. And wow. Sometimes it’s nice to just BE. Be together. Be alone. And by “alone” I mean there was still an infant child asleep behind us in his carseat {of course}. But it still counts as alone in our world. Sometimes the busy days and meetings and long hours and to do lists keep us from just being. It was a chance to breath together and sync our hearts once again and remember why and what and WHO these days are really all about.
We were listening to some worship music and before we knew it, Chris Tomlin’s “God of Angel Armies” was on. There are a lot of times I hear that song and it doesn’t prick my soul. I don’t go THERE. But yesterday was not one of those. Sometimes they’re just words we sing. Other times, they’re words that cut straight thru to our very hearts.
Have you ever noticed how quickly we forget what God has done for us? That’s something I’ve been learning on this journey of ours. It’s one of the things that I take with me and try to hold close. I see us, you know, each day… praying less, reading less, relying on Him less. Forgetting that we can walk side by side with God in the normal-est of days, with the same closeness and reliance as we did in the most desperate of times. He’s HERE you guys. Even in the every day. We just need to take a good look around.
Think about the Israelites. I never used to understand how fickle and self absorbed they could be. How could they forget the parting of the red sea? The manna from heaven??? Now I get it. I’m no different. I think that’s partly why God’s people made altars. You’ll find altars all over in the Bible. Mostly right after God did something big in the lives of His people. Sometimes He commanded them to do it. He knew they would need to remember. But I wonder if sometimes they did it on their own as well. Built an altar of remembrance and NAMED it.
We never stopped and stacked stones the many times God came thru big for us last year. We made a photo book and wrote posts on our caring bridge and blog. Never Forget. I think that’s what we’d name our altar. The words that line the binding of the coffee table book we made documenting last year.
There are lyrics and verses and photos and words that are written on our souls now. And there are days we unknowingly stumble across them and we’re taken back and we REMEMBER. Just like the Israelites. What God did. Who God was to us in that time. WHO HE STILL IS. Who He wants to be for us in the every day, even still. These altars take us to a real place. To the cross of our lives. Where we meet our Savior and are changed again. And again. And again. And we retell pieces of this story and God is glorified. And we are brought to our knees. And somehow this life makes sense again. That IS an altar, isn’t it?
“What it takes to build an altar are really just broken things.” Rocks maybe. Or maybe it’s the tree you planted when your grandma died. Or the song that reminds one of my best friends of the dear sweet brother she lost all those years ago. “You can take the hard and broken things and arrange them before the Lord”… and use it as a place to grow and reflect and stand in awe of Him and how He brought you thru. “Or you can drag the rocks around and allow yourself to be burdened by them.” (rephrased from an article I read by Jack Hayford on altars)
So yesterday it was a song. These words:
whom shall I fear…nothing formed against me shall stand…you hold the whole world in your hands…the God of angel armies is by my side…the one who reigns forever, He is a friend of MINE…I know who goes before me…I know who stands behind. (by Chris Tomlin, God of Angel Armies)
We held hands. Not just strolling thru the parking lot or sitting in the car mindlessly holding hands either. It’s like our souls were holding hands on that drive. We held back the tears and sang, or I did at least, and talked about what we were doing at this time last year. How we had just learned about his heart condition… how he had just got out of the hospital (for the second time)… how he had started IV antibiotics and felt trapped and like he would never taste life again… how one time we had to drop in at a dear friend’s house and hang his the IV bag from their ceiling fan so he could get his meds on time. {Funny now…but at the time, not so much}. How he sat in THAT chair…for weeks. And the kids would fight over who would carry him the tray of food because he could barely walk or stand or make it to the bathroom without help… and how he had constant aching and night sweats and day sweats and would have to change clothes every half hour for months. How he was almost brought to tears every time he passed by a mirror and could see what his body had become.
But eventually, we peeked our heads out. We continued to try to play our hand in life. The body starting healing. The rest came in time. And yes, those scary curtains eventually came down too. We had to humble ourselves, in many ways, and let the scary drapes of our circumstances hang for everyone to see. We couldn’t hide them. We weren’t supposed to.
We had a baby shower…
We had a BABY.
We made funny faces and tried to act like it wasn’t a big deal to be in a hospital again. We tried our best to be “normal” and not think about the big surgery looming ahead for him. At least for the moment he wasn’t the patient, I was.
We had a birthday party for Rig. Probably a week after the baby came and my c-section…and a week or two before Derek’s big surgery. Crazy. But necessary. We chose to keep living. Even though most of the time we were ready to crawl back in bed and hide under the covers.
We watched people play with our kids. And eventually we started playing too. We went to t-ball games. Derek was winded and dizzy, but we did our best to get out there.
We sent the kids outside with Papa Dan and let him drive them thru the yard and woods on the top of his old truck. We let them be kids.
I think for us, this remembering…has to include the hard AND the good. It’s all part of what God did in us. So yes, it’s good sometimes to stop by the altar of remembrance and stand in awe of this God of ours. To wipe the smudges off our perspectives and SEE Him again.
I’m thankful that we’ve moved forward and don’t have these conversations too too often. We don’t live in the past, I promise. But when we pass by the altar and God invites us back to where He’s taken us…we slow down for a few hours and take it ALL in. And we get a good look at this God of ours.
I was reading Psalm 77 this morning. The writer is crying out for help…in distress. But then in verse 10…
“To this I will appeal: the years of the right hand of the Most High. I will remember the deeds of the Lord; yes, I will remember your miracles of long ago. I will meditate on all your works and consider all your deeds.”
[i.will.remember.]