Sunday, March 24, 2013

Under Taller Skies


Hello!  I am so glad you have come to visit!  I am trying to think of what this blog is about, how to introduce it.  However, it is about so much, there are so many words trying to rush to my fingers all at once!  It is about....beauty.  Simplicity.  Hardship.  Faith.  Love.  A cat.  Pretty things.  Sad things.  Brilliant things.  It is about mind and heart and body and spirit and finding our purpose in the Lord.  I want it to be pretty for you, a place to rest.

But I also want it to be honest for you, as I do not want to convey an unattainable imaginary place for you to long for where the mom never gets restless, the kids never get grouchy, the dog never piddles on the rug, the sun always shines, and flowers always grow.  No, because that would be a disservice to you.  It would be unkind.  And patently false! :)  Beauty, peace, mercy, can be found in a desert, in a garden, in a cramped city flat.  Love can be found in singleness, waiting for a spouse, on a honeymoon, sitting at night by a hospital bed, or in the kindness of, or to, a stranger.  There is abundant charm in an English cottage by a river and surrounded by wildflowers, but also in a suburban ranch with a minivan in the driveway.  There is delight in happiness, clarity in sorrow, forgiveness in wounds.

I want to help you find the beauty, peace, rest in YOUR life by showing you how I am trying (ahem!) to find it in mine.  Let's challenge each other to a purer, more faithful, more reverent, more brilliant life under taller skies.

"So Why 'Taller Skies'?"  I LOVE the sky.  I think it is one of God's most miraculous creations.  My favorite is towering billowing storm clouds that reach thousands of feet in the air like cotton castles.  I used to imagine living there when I was a child.

Alaska, for all its incredible, amazing beauty, had "short skies".  The clouds simply did not tower, as there was not enough instability in the atmosphere.  Also, often the clouds were low (for snows), or the sky was lost in ice fog (which I actually adored--love ice fog!  Made everything look like Queen Frostine's castle!).  We lived in the trees and I never really got good views of the sky.  I often remarked that I felt like I was living in the top of the snow globe :)

But the south is a place for stretching out, for reaching through a beautiful, turbulent sky to Heaven.  It has the same sort of the wonder of the massiveness of the city...with fresher air and less honking from cars :).  I love living under these tall, tall skies.

"Are you going to get all preachy?"  LOLOLOL--no.  Well, yes.  But not trying to preach!  I actually am writing these things for myself as much as for you.  I am a regular, size 12 trying to live in a size 2 world, an ambitious woman without a goal, a mom without a clue, a wife with a husband who is better than I am.  Our family has gone through massive hardships in the past.  I have issues, struggles, grouchinesses, and I write about them.  But as I write, the Lord talks to me.  He always helps me figure out stuff when I write--it is our best communication.  So as I write for you, He is also talking to me.  It is not at all to preach--I have no leg to stand on there.  It is so that we all can have the very best that He has to offer.  See, peace and love and beauty in our lives is not at all about having a farmhouse with an expansive walk around porch and three adorable chickens and a goat.  Joy, happiness, good relationships, peace, laughter--they all come from within, as I am slowly learning :).  So while I do want to post about decorating my house, I also want to post about decorating my soul, so I am not a white washed tomb--pretty on the outside, but full of death and dying and ick on the inside.

He is the reason for everything good in my life, and I would be remiss indeed if I showed the presents but not the One who gave them to me!  :)

So sit back, relax, be thinking of how YOU can breathe in your own life.  Let's bloth strive to see the beauty and miracles, big and small, that the Lord gives us.  Let us "think upon such things" such as beauty and excellence and every good thing. :)