Always this tug-o-war between what should be and what is.
Always more to do.
I want the kind of life that gives rest
And takes the focus
Off the cares of this world,
Puts them on Jesus, and ushers hope along.
In long,
Sweeping gusts.
A rest-giving,
Beauty-seeing life.
***
At the end of Thanksgiving break I capped the days off with the dread of what's to come - back to the grind, back to busy, back to the pressure of deadlines and attitudes and performance. We had enjoyed a solid week together as a family, but I was cutting it off short with all my worry about things that hadn't happened yet. Borrowing trouble.
I have to fight a bad attitude whenever my peace is threatened. I have to decide that all those things I don't want to do or am afraid to do or anticipate having to do, are moments in time. Only moments.
Life is a string of those moments we can't avoid, interspersed with the ones we want to make last. So much of the possibility for beauty is in how I think, react, speak, and prepare for the moments, and how I make sudden stops for noticing.
***
I'm deciding that I only have room for beauty. Everything else will have to wait. Everything rushed or stressed or bitter or hardened will have to wait outside while I entertain beauty.
I know - this won't work.
This experiment in beauty-only will turn to an exercise in futility-mostly, and I'll be all the things I want to ignore. I'll be the disappointed one. Rushed, stressed, bitter and hardened, because reality is going to come crashing in and it's not sunshine and roses, so why set my heart on beauty? I'm only disillusioned.
Unless I decide not to be.
I try to erase thoughts already thunk and I battle down doubts like so many dragon-slayers before me. This mind, and your mind, such gifts that can turn against us.
The key must be to have a storehouse of beauty in these minds so bent on ugly.
I will take charge of what's been entrusted to me. I will do more than fight dragon-fires and react to sparks. I will do something beforehand and prepare more than platitudes like band-aids for bad days, like thin coverings for heavy hearts.
I will prepare a storehouse of beauty right in the face of an unjust world.
And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise. ~ Phil 4:8 NLT
The morning light comes flaming over the mountain and the birds come to the feeder and grass is the greenest green ever.
The music plays soft, or it's loud and fervent, and all the passion blazes.
Laughter cracks the exhaustion of the day.
The oranges are sweet and the air is crisp and that one last leaf mimics the ocean as it undulates down to earth.
Small things are always with us, whereas the Big Moments of life pass quickly. We go from anticipation to excitement to memories, and that Big Thing only gives way to waiting for the next Big Thing.
But free beauty is hidden in everyday, woven in, and we are looking for it like treasure to come and welcoming the Big Things like the small diversions they really are.
I think heaven will be full of all the small things we enjoyed here.