As the Dust Settles

Her life came apart at the seams in ways she had never agreed to. 

Anne Lamott

As the dust is settling on my Lyme diagnosis, I am scared. I wish I felt braver.

As we get information a little at a time about this long, crooked road in front of us I am just trying to keep track of the pieces that seem to be coming apart left and right so that we have them when it’s time for mending. Who really ever agrees to the ways our lives come apart at the seams? None of us. It’s not usually our choice. I suppose what is our choice is what we do with the pieces and how we mend them.

Fear has lost so much ground in my life. As a young girl, I bought into the lie that control can manage fear. I ordered my heart for control. But now I know there is only one thing bigger than fear: Love.

Still, fear has a cozy little familiar spot in me where it can get in and grow. Fear left untended grows much like the bacteria that is crippling me. It invades every tissue, every nerve, every joint, every vital organ. It can drill through my healthy places and burrow deep.

My Wasteland: Lyme Disease

In this wasteland

Where I’m living

There is a crack in the door filled with light

And it’s all that I need to get by

In this wastleland where I’m living

There is a crack in the door filled with light

And it’s all that I need to shine

(Need to Breathe, Wasteland)

Last week, we were plunged into a wasteland. It was like a sinkhole that opened up and swallowed me whole.

I’ve been hiding ever since. I’m not hiding because I don’t want people to know. I think I’ve been hiding because when the sinkhole collapsed around me, I realized I could barely breathe. I needed to breathe slow and steady. I could not afford to lose any oxygen screaming or panicking. Or fending off constant advice, misinformation, or well-intended minimizing of how serious this is for us. There is only so much air down here and we need all of it.

Tremors, Bike Rides & Learning to Leave

I live in the most beautiful country in the world, I thought. I seriously gulp in the air and my whole body does a sigh of longing and contentment. 

I was riding in response to the way my illness is changing my body.

The tremor set in again today. Sometimes it stays all day and sometimes a few hours. It disarms me. My head wobbles and bobbles unnoticed to others. But because its my head, I notice every movement.

I rode to remind my body, soul and mind of strength.

I rode to retrain my motor memory. Body, you are strong. Remember this. Don’t forget it.

I rode so not to lose the strength and mobility my body has now. I rode in response to fear of losing more.

I rode to delight in the day.

I rode to notice beauty rather than dwell on weakness and fear.

I rode to pretend I am who I always was.

I rode to distract myself from the shaking and the unwelcome firework show my nerves were putting on.

But I finally stopped riding and pretending and distracting. I sat on the rocks and watched the water and canoes float by on the river.

My body trembled and I didn’t try to stop it.

I thought about how I have always been a stay-er. In relationships, churches, jobs, with cell phone companies and difficult tasks. I have stayed way past when I wanted to leave. Maybe this is good for character. Maybe I should’ve learned leaving before now. Who can say? It doesn’t much matter to me now.

My illness is teaching me many things. Gentling me. It is also teaching me that this might be a season of realizing I have learned to stay. This is not a gap in my formation. I’ve been a stay-er. I am now learning about leaving and letting go. Maybe this is precisely because I have learned to stay. Richard Rohr talks about something similar here.
Its teaching me to live more open-handed perhaps. Sometimes I’m too weak for grasping.

But in this beautiful home, neighborhood, city, bike path, country – I’d like to keep on being a stay-er. You, beautiful places, give me somewhere to stay as I’m learning to leave.

PS. It was also fun to be a rebel :) and ride without a helmet. So much more relaxing and peaceful.

10 Years

August 2013 - Ten Years


 

10 years ago we promised things we couldn't possibly understand. This says less about our tender ages and more about the joys and challenges of marriage. It was 102 degrees and 100% humidity. Luckily, the refining fires of marriage produce more than just unbearable heat. 

10 years is starting to feel like a respectable number. Still young, still changing, still in the beginning stages of family life but marked by a love that grows firmer, deeper, and wider day by day, fight by fight, delight by delight, grace by grace. We've been through "stuff" now. Our love has logged some miles and been tested in hard places- physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually and financially. Each time we come through a hard place, a 'fire', we can see the beauty and character that was being formed in our marriage, in us.

Like gold, our relationship feels fragile and vulnerable  in the middle of the hard place. Perhaps it is. Perhaps the pliability, malleability in the fire is what allows it to take beautiful shape or to break. By God's grace and our perseverance and commitment, our marriage has continued to be shaped rather than break.  There are many ways for a marriage to break without divorce. I've seen a few of them and its sad. We have continued to find each other in (or at least at the tail end) of the hard places and help birth something new in our relationship. I am proud of this. I am proud of us.   

Thirteen years ago when we started our long distance love story, we had no way of knowing that this relationship would be a central place of formation, of transformation, in knowing ourselves, God and others. 

Our first official date in March 2000 hiking up Sulphur Mountain in snow. This american city girl did not have a clue what I was getting into when I wore a hoodie, vest and runners for a 5.5 km hike in Canadian winter. I couldn't drink enough hot chocolate when we finally reached the top. My discomfort is more than obvious on my face. Pretty sure I was cursing Jason, the hike, the snow, Canada and anything else I could think of at this point. We took the gondola down. :)

Jason and I were recently back on Sulphur with the kids (we did not hike it this time) so we took a commemorative picture. This picture helps you see just how cold, snowy and cloudy it was when we hiked it in 2000. No mountain views, no lingering out on the observation deck to enjoy the beauty of what surrounded us. Our life together is a little like these two pictures. Now it is easy to see the beauty of our marriage. We can look out and see the places we've been. When we take in the whole view, it is breathtaking and beautiful. The peaks are glorious. Some have been jagged too.  

So many things about me have changed since that day ten years ago. There are some things we wish we'd done differently at our wedding, mostly more character and more relational. But as I took a look at our vows, they are still the words I would choose if I were marrying Jason today. Since words are important to me, this brought me joy. A gift. 

We took our marriage vows from a book Jason gave me for my 19th birthday, a few years before we were married, SoulCraft: How God Shapes Us Through Relationships.Ten years in, with what I know about marriage now, these words are still what I would want to promise and be promised. 

Shanna, do you take Jason to be your husband, and to live together after God's command in holy marriage? Do you promise to be his considerate, faithful, and loving wife and submit your life to the authority of God's Word? Do you covenant to love him, support and serve him, guide and cherish him in prosperity and in adversity; in sorrow and in happiness; in sickness and in health; and forsaking all others, be united to him so long as you both shall live? 

Me: I take you and give myself to you. With deepest joy I join my life with yours. I promise to cherish and uphold you from this day forward as long as our lives shall last. And as a symbol of my promise I give you this ring, a celebration of our union in Christ, in the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

These promises still resonate with my heart and I am committed to live them out in our marriage. But maybe now, after ten years of marriage, I know how much grace is needed to live these out in a way that honors Jason, our marriage and our God. 

A cord of three strands is not easily broken. 

Ecclesiastes 4:12

*********

 

This was not a moment I was meant to see but it just might be my favorite picture of all time.

I was on the floor playing Lego with Evan when I noticed Jason's grandpa doing an ordinary act of kindness (love). And it struck me as extraordinary after 66 years of marriage. Sheepishly, I secretly (not anymore) captured the moment. It made me think of this friend's post after 40 years of marriage. Bottom line: To have a marriage marked by true kindness is the best promise we can make and keep for our marriages. 

This is real marriage. Grandpa has probably done this act of kindness hundreds of times for his bride. It is not glamorous or romantic but something about it strikes me as profoundly beautiful, intimate, kind. A beautiful marriage is not running through airports or romantic getaways (though I would not complain about one:), it is about staying and committing and cherishing and laundry and laughing and cleaning bathrooms and bills and listening and nurturing and tying shoes when your beloved can no longer do this for themselves.

Loved this.

We enjoyed a night out to celebrate.
In September we will enjoy our anniversary gift from Jason's parents: a weekend at a B & B and a play at the Rosebud Theatre. Can't wait.

Thought it was fitting that our anniversary dinner had some Kansas City fare on the menu. :)

Chop's yummy version of a bellini. Check out that ice cube.

The cutest dessert I've ever seen: A mini white chocolate raspberry creme brulee. It was as good as it sounds.

Life Lessons from My Gardening Foibles

This morning, I sat on the front steps sipping my morning tea looking out at my little garden I love. Sometime ago when I wrote my Things I Do and Things I Don’t Do list, gardening fell squarely on the things I don’t do side. For all intents and purposes, I still don’t. A couple of years ago, I nearly lost my mind and uprooted our beautiful, healthy, 12 year old irises to plant a food garden. If you know me, you know this is funny bordering on insane. Because really, my indoor plants are an evolutionary experiment: survival of the fittest. I do well to throw an ice cube in the pot now and then (a trick my sister taught me).

It was also an insane idea because the many places of my life require, in truth, probably more than I actually have to give so though fresh garden veggies would be awesome, I probably ought not give my energy toward growing plants when I sometimes find it hard to grow children or my marriage.

I am no gardener.

Case and point: While Evan was in VBS, Cara and I decided to weed the front flower bed at the church. Everyone walking by commented on a beautiful flower growing there. Inevitably, they would ask me what it was (I had no idea). But I marveled at these beautiful flowers that had survived the early summer excavation to shore up the building`s foundation beneath it. Amazing, I thought. Now that’s a hearty flower. Before I could contemplate any deeper meaning ;), one of the ladies from our church came out and marvelled with me about their beauty. Then she told me she planted them. In July. They are annuals. A rookie mistake. Gardening is not in my wheelhouse.

But this little front garden/landscaping we put in lastsummer is manageable. I have come to understand just a little of why real gardeners say gardening is something of a spiritual, meaningful, experience for them. I have watered and weeded and waited for these plants to grow and bloom.  Healthy growth takes time and attention, changing seasons and good soil. When hail came last year, I nearly ran outside and sat with my favorites under tarps to protect them.  I held my breath to see if the worst hit would make it. Sure enough – they all did.

Here is what my little garden is teaching me now:

Gently wait. If you can’t wait gently, at least wait.

I have learned the hard way that grabbing scissors and cutting away what looks dead too early will stunt growth and beauty. The mullet on my potentilla testifies to this.

Potentilla with a mullet

I have learned that pruning away at the right time brings health and luster that would not have come if I had not trimmed away the fading branches. My Korean Lilac (my not-so-secret favorite) is reaping the benefits of my judicious trimming because it doesn’t have to put its energy toward the wrong thing (seeding).

I am learning rash choices that don’t account for the future will be costly down the road. I really wanted a Mugo Pine but the garden centre didn’t have a miniature at the time. So I asked the guy if I could just keep trimming off new growth once it reaches the size I want it. He shrugged his sixteen year old shoulders and said, “Oh yeah.” I didn’t get the sense he really knew what he was talking about but I liked his answer and I bought it. A few weeks after it was planted in a 4x4 spot in our garden, I saw a full grown Mugo Pine in a friend’s backyard. It’s an enormous tree. This little-gonna-be-mighty Mugo also teaches me to be careful who I invite to give answers to the questions of life I am wrestling with. Maybe even more importantly, to not simply look for answers that I want to hear.

I am learning that even when I nurture and care for something, it might bloom in ways totally unexpected and not always to my liking. My hydrangea has always been the most fragile. I have nursed it, watched and hoped it would become beautiful and healthy. Turns out, now that it is becoming heartier, it is ugly. The flowers are green! Green? I don’t actually want any green flowers in my little garden. I have enough green, thank you very much. Can’t you be yellow or white or pink or blue or purple? I don’t care. Just not green. What to do with this plant that I have nourished and protected only to find it isn’t anything like what I want? I read somewhere there are special techniques to change the color of a hydrangea’s blossoms. Possibly. Seems kind of wrong. Truthfully, I am tempted to rip it out and start over. Spend $30 and an hour and plant something that actually looks beautiful to me. Maybe I will yet, I’m not sure. When Jason used to frown at the pile of yellow and orange skittles I threw in the garbage, I would say “It is candy. I am eating it for pleasure. Why would I eat candy I don’t even like?” But I have a hard time letting go of my ugly hydrangea because I have given a little of myself to it and feel responsible for it, I think.

As I sat on my front steps this morning and thought about what I am learning in my fumbling gardening attempts, I realized they apply to my “real life” too. I came away with this self-insight that stuck:

I have always had a hard time giving up on things, even when they don’t please me or bring me pleasure. Especially if I have invested any bit of myself in it/them. I don’t have a clue if this is helpful or unhelpful to my life or others. It means my green hydrangea gets to keep on living and the Mugo Pine stays poised in its place to choke out my beloved Korean Lilac – the thing of beauty I actually LOVE in my garden. And I just wait. Unable to make a decision because I care about that little pine and the hydrangea too – even as its green blossoms continue to irritate me. 

For now, I wait and water and hope.

The Desert, the Gentle Life & Turning 32

Celebrating 32! 

The Journey

Mary Oliver

One day you finally knew

what you had to do, and began,

though the voices around you

kept shouting

their bad advice—

Though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug

at your ankles

“mend my life!”

each voice cried. 

But you didn’t stop

you knew what you had to do,

though the wind pried

with its stiff fingers

at the very foundations,

though their melancholy

was terrible

It was already late

enough, and a wild night,

and the road full of fallen

branches and stones.

But little by little,

as you left their voices behind,

the stars began to burn

through the sheets of clouds

and there was a new voice

which you slowly

recognized as your own

that kept you company

as you strode deeper and deeper

into the world (desert)

determined to do

the only thing you could do-

determined to save

the only life you could save

*******

Writing a birthday post has been like pulling teeth this year. My best guess is because I am in a desert: a season where everything is shifting but hasn’t settled yet. It’s hard to use words to describe the landscape and the view from here, things are still dusty.

Last year, I sensed I was entering a spiritual desert. I did not want to be there/here. It felt lonely, long and dusty. I wondered if I was in a desert because I can be drawn to scarcity, fear and hard things. I knew that nurture, love, and real care make me feel vulnerable and nervous but was I not learning to trust in the innocence and goodness of those things? Did I really need a desert to teach me? I wondered if this was a desert of my own making and if I would get trapped here. Back then I wrote,

Will it be a slow death of some part of me as I wander in this wilderness for who knows how long? What might die? My joy? My humor? Relationships? Hope? My thirst to grow and become or my belief that these things are good and worthwhile? I don’t want to be here. How did I get here? How do I get out?

Really, I just wanted out.

In the middle of these questions, I was reading the story of the Exodus. And a couple of non-descript, after-the-grand-story, verses stood out to me and helped me trust:

“When Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them on the road through the Philistine country, though that was shorter. For God said, ‘If they face war, they might change their minds and return to Egypt (bondage). So God led the people around by the desert road toward the Red Sea.”

The desert road was God’s good gift to His people. It hardly felt like it to them. He knew their fragile faith could not handle a different route. Their time in the desert was excruciating and long. But it was in the desert that God gave His precious people a new way of living in relationship with Him. Coming out of generations of slavery, even their bodies needed to be purified from their life in Egypt so they did not bring those things with them into new life. He did not leave his people alone in the desert. He was present to them, guiding them in the way they should go by the pillar and the cloud. 

I started praying that I would listen and look for the pillars and the clouds along my desert road.

A year later, I know the desert is necessary and good for me. In my thirty-one years I have accumulated a lot of junk (literally and metaphorically). While I clutch all of the things that make me feel ‘safe’ and ‘secure’, I have been unable to receive other gifts that lead me toward a life of love. So the desert has been/is a gift. I can say this honestly now. Henri Nouwen wrote about the movement from desert to garden. “To live a spiritual life we must first find the courage to enter into the desert and change it by gentle and persistent efforts into a garden … A dry desolate garden can yield endless variety of flowers.” I didn’t go into it with gardening in mind, more like uncertainty and just a little trust. This desert-garden has been a place of learning to let go; to stop clinging to people and their opinions of me, books, experiences, plans, and fears. But along this way, I have found/am finding budding flowers and see the promise of a garden. In this coming year, I am committed to tending the garden in my desert.

It isn’t an easy (painless, pleasant) process letting go of favorite things that have, in many ways, comforted and “worked” for me for most of my life. I learned to mask these in a way that often got me approval from others but when all of that is stripped away, what’s left is this:

Perfectionism

People-pleasing

Silencing my voice

Jealousy

Co-dependency/Being needed

Sugar

Justifying the ugliness of my heart

Insatiable thirst for specialness

Pride

And … did I mention pride?

As I walk the desert road it has become a journey of taking off, discerning, repenting and detaching these from my true heart. It has been and still is (always will be?) messy. But even as I write this, I realize it isn’t just about losing things. It’s about losing these to find real life; life alive to God, others and myself. In place of these old things, I am finding new things. So while I’ve thought this past year has been about dying, I now realize it is about new life, growth.

Listening to and Honoring My Voice

I have been journeying toward this for the past thirteen years but this year I realized the central importance of voice for each of us. Finding and honoring voice - our formation, longings, fears, etc -  is a marker for recovery, for healing. I gave up my voice as a kid. Seemed safer without it I suppose. Silencing my voice went hand-in-hand with working hard to be "good" and lovable. But I lost something vital then and am only now reclaiming it. The neat thing is that as I learn to honor my own voice, it does not make me more stubborn or selfish (as I thought it might), it makes me kind and compassionate and more likely to listen for and honor the voice of others. This does not mean it has been easy for the people around me who are used to a “silent” me or a more-at-work-in-relationship me. It’s been a growing place. I have not lived into it perfectly but I am learning and figuring it out. As I learn to listen to my own voice, I can release the tight hold I’ve had on my self-concept. I am (just a little) more able to see not only the ways I am wounded but the ways I wound others.  

Honoring my body

The past year, my body offered me a wake-up call. I had no choice but to listen. It sparked a desire to honor my body and what it gives me for life. It’s kind of ironic that debilitating pain, a fragile and falling apart body, helped me see how disconnected I am from my body and offer a place of gently reconnecting to my whole self. So God-honoring. At times I have ruled my body like a task-master, sculpting and pushing it without rest or nurture. Other times, instead of listening to my body and what it needs, I have gulped down sugar or comfort food that allow me to keep numbing out. Since there isn’t a lot going on in a desert (or a lot of StarbucksJ), it has been a time to slow down, learn to listen and take care of this great gift of my body. Several times I have pushed myself, with determination into sugar detox, without success. Its interesting that in this desert, as I have started a less severe relationship with my body, the sugar addiction has faded almost naturally. A gentle rhythm of feasts and fasts. Of moderation. And of nurture.   

Gift of work

A career that is full of purpose and Kingdom work. I have blogged before about my dilemma with work and staying at home. I still live in that tension. But in the middle of the tension I recognize a gift. In the past year, particularly in the hardest parts of my health issues, though I felt desperate to not be working, now I can see it was one of the best things for me. On a practical level, it forced me to pull myself together 2 ½ days a week and go out of the house. It forced me to put on nice(ish) clothes and fix my hair. It also allowed me not to become consumed by myself – my pain and my fears. When I get to my office, I light two candles on the table and do so as a marker that I am transitioning into a different role than that of wife, mom, friend, complicated person. JIn that room, my own stuff is moved aside to hold space for the people sitting across from me. This was so good for me during that really hard time of waiting, aching, depression and wondering.  

Private practice has grown my faith, transformed my understanding and experience of diligent work as something good and central in our God-breathed humanness even if I would rather it all came on a silver platter. It has been a reminder that God’s grace with diligent effort is a beautiful thing. I am humbled and grateful to say that Birdsong is thriving. This beautiful work allows me to see God at work, healing and redeeming broken places in so many lives as well as be home more than at the office - both of these are so good for my heart.

Embracing an ordinary life

My heart has tuned in to a more “everyday spirituality”. Sacred in the ordinary. The desert is teaching me how to notice and look for the sacred in the ordinary, how to be sacred in the ordinary. Somehow it seems this is the antidote to my insatiable appetite for specialness. Dallas Willard writes that most Christians are so ‘ready’ and focused on dying that they are not prepared to live this gift of a life. A life with God is not (only) about a ticket out of here. I want to be satisfied and grounded in an ordinary life, marked by love rather than a pursuit to prove and validate my own specialness. Somehow, I think they are intertwined. So often I have snuffed out the candle of others (covertly, of course) so that my own candle can shine brighter. This is shifting. I don’t know much more than that.

           

A favorite quote: Frail dust, remember you are splendor.

A most beautiful surprise has come in this desert-garden: the beginnings of the gentle life. 

The desert changed my direction; one I thought I would hate. The willfull, determined, self-sufficient way I have lived does not work in the desert. And so I am learning a gentler, slower, way. It’s ironic. Over the past several years, I have blogged a few times about my longing for gentleness, my wonderings about how to craft it with my fierce and typically “effective” determination. Who knew I would discover this beautiful gift (not craft it) smack dab in the middle of a dry and barren desert? I am looking forward to discovering and living into the gentle life Jesus calls us to.

“Many of us long for gentleness in ourselves and others. It is like a treasure lost, buried under the pressures of an achievement society. Gentleness does not exclude strong and courageous stands. I can rest or work, give in to people or fight with them, both gently and violently. Gentleness is more than just relaxation and giving in; it is more than the opposite of fight, work, ambition. It is an attitude which affects and changes the style of my play or work, my fight or surrender, my admiration or rightful indignation. How I fight, argue, study, entertain, work or play then reveals the presence or absence of gentleness in my life…The gentle person is more free. She can take herself and the world as they are because she feels free to be herself and to let all things be with the same gentility. There is a friendly accord between her and her life situation. She does not feel she has to push herself (willful life) forward or hold herself back.” (Spirituality & the Gentle Life, Van Kaam)

As far as I can see, this year holds more desert walking. But maybe I am walking with more hope and joy and trust that this desert-garden is a great gift to me. As I keep discerning, repenting and detaching from the deformed ways I have built my life, I sense I am and will be freer to run the race marked out for me. I am excited at what I will learn and how I will learn to live into the gentle life in year 32. 

Breakdown and the Gift of Uncertainty

Over the past couple of years, I have started learning to be okay without tidy resolutions. I am more comfortable with the phrase this is what I know for now. It’s more honest. One woman said that phrase in the class I taught last week as we discussed sexuality and God and faithfulness. And I was moved by the humility, love, trust and vulnerability that comes in a statement like that. No pretending paradox does not exist, no pretending/controlling to feel better in the middle of the tension. This is what I know for now. Not only is there freedom in that statement but there is grace and there is room for each of us.

In November 2011, I had something of a nervous breakdownspiritual awakening as Brene Brown might say. In desperation, I picked myself up off the bathroom floor and packed a suitcase and drove to Bragg Creek as I felt everything I thought held my life together seem to fall apart. Really, it was my false selves falling apart, not my true life, but it sure felt like it. Sitting out under the big Alberta sky, scared to pray for fear of how I might twist or misunderstand whatever I thought I heard coming back to my heart, I wrote a list of the things I could say I knew to be unshakable truth. I wasn’t sure I would have anything. I did, but surprisingly, it was a very small list. I still work off that list scribbled on a tattered piece of notebook paper.

There is a Creator

Who loves me (us) fiercely 

Who is good

Who is Mystery 

Who is Love

I will not break

This is what I felt and knew and held unswervingly. I realized everything else might fall away for awhile or maybe forever but this I knew for sure. 

My life had formed around so much fear. I believed the lie that control could tame/manage fear. I worked hard to keep fear in line but really, it was keeping me in line. This looked like a lot of closed-fisted control in my life. Perfectionism. The gentle life is not possible when our hands are furiously and desperately clutching an illusion of control. This happens with sincere faith too. It is out of fear that we clutch desperately and leave no room for conversation about the mystery of faith and God. Mostly, I am no longer afraid of saying This is what I know for now. Usually, I am just hoping to have the maturity and wisdom to remember this in any given conversation. I sometimes still clutch, but not as tightly, and it is starting to feel foreign to me.  I continue on the path of God-ward obedience without the fear of one/every misstep. All is Grace. Because of this, I am freer to share the ragged, unpretty parts of my story, to become more human. I am also freer to hear and hold the stories of others without needing to control them, give answers or make them fit within my own ‘tidy’ (narrow) theology. It’s messier but it is rich and deep.  

1 Corinthians 13 is a great comfort to me as my heart ponders and wonders and shares experiences that often hold many questions and tensions. It gives grace and permission to not control and distort by pretending we have all of the answers. There is room for the Mystery of God because we know our spiritual vision is blurry. There is room for me to release the perfecting and trust that it is enough to do the best I can to walk with trust and hope in God and living out love the best I know how, even if it is messy or inadequate or wrong. There is grace because God already knows we don’t see things quite as they are so He gives us trust, hope and Love to guide us toward the day when everything will be clear. For now, we’re called to do the best we can with what we know now. When we acknowledge we don't know where every piece of the puzzle should go, there is room for sharing and honoring the stories and wisdom of others.

What we say about God is always incomplete…We don’t yet see things clearly. We’re squinting as through a fog. But it won’t be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright. We’ll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us … But for now, until then, and in all that fog we have three things to guide us toward that time: Trust steadily in God, Hope unswervingly, and Love extravagantly. And the greatest of these is love.

Love this talk  on the faith pilgrimage/spiritual formation.

I know it's been awhile since I've posted. Check back soon for pictures/stories of the past couple of weeks.