Anything Goes

coffee and words, almost.

running Saturday is a post-race exhale when the week behind you fades and time ahead hasn't yet awoken.  The past few weeks have been on blaze.  Days end and begin and blur by with a furious shuffle.  I can only go at life in this way for so long until things within begin to pull apart and break.  It's not healthy to live so fast.  It's unholy and unbecoming.

Last night was the push to the finish line of another week gone by too fast.  The push to end was well worth it.  For the first time we opened our home to host new friends.  As our family slumped low into the cushions on the couch worn tired and thin, we waited to play hosts.  Friends began to arrive in twos and threes and soon our home was filled with a crowd, no, a community of mixed faces and varying hearts.  We sat huddled discussing grace's undoing of moralism through the Gospel.  I faded in and out sharing my own struggles and experiences.  Our night together ended in confessions that opened our hearts vulnerably so that we could be found and kept.  And then I stretched my hand forward, reached for the finish line and breathed out relieved.  I knew the week was done and enough.  The group left except for two, a beautiful husband and wife who seem well fit to be good friends.  We greeted the morning together going further into each other's lives, as if the welcome wasn't enough - we began to feel at home.  Goodbyes were exchanged at 2am, and then, the bed never felt so good.  This is an exceptionally good Saturday morning.  Here's what poked around at with a cup of coffee.  I do hope you enjoy!

lent, going more than giving.

stars in the sky IN THE ABSENCE OF ME, I meet You more.  Small diminished pockets of my heart hold the glory of eternity in my forfeit – my giving, my dying and disappearing – when the heaps of spoil pulled close around my heart burn away in the heat of Your unturned love.  We meet on hallowed ground You’ve equaled, not of my giving or sacrifice trite and incomplete.  Even beyond a scandalous love, You bid me come to peace that I could never discover on my own.

Lent is just this – giving in response to God’s ultimate compassion.  This season delivers an invitation to all who might come and die within their hearts to all things crowding thought and affections, all owned things honoring and satisfying only the heart.  In simple words, lent is removing important stuff from our heart so that God’s love has more room to grow deep within us.

So it’s subtraction, but also addition.

What will you give up is but a whisper in comparison to, What will you add?

It is imperative to us both as parents that we teach our daughters the importance of why we do the things we do, not merely do these things because we do these things.  Celebrate traditions laced in meaning and those celebrations give way to life development.  Our daughters ask why and we tell them.  This does two things:  it informs our children about the meaning of what we do and it ensures that we know why it is we do what we do.  Just as stories are lifeless until you read them with meaning having immersed yourself into the emotion of the words, not only the form of them, routine behavior is also meaningless until we subscribe to its meaning and embrace it in heart.

A question constantly asked within my heart is, ‘how can I show my children the way?’  The answer that echoes in return is profound – ‘go the way.’

 

 

 

spring break pictorially.

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We took to the mountains; retreated into snow to forget for a moment and remember all that really matters, what we truly know.

Spring break in Colorado couldn't have come at a better time.  No infringing schedule or deadlines other than hiking times, a snow tubing appointment, restaurant reservations, movie times, late nights anticipated, later mornings, and of course, naps.

I'll let my words sink into the photographs and give way for them to tell the stories of our week together well lived.

 

One last thing, you know vacation is truly good when in the end a smile still stretches across well rested, satisfied faces.