A Day

Do you know about the Mariana Trench.

Do you know of this amazing place, the deepest ocean trench in all the world.

How simply amazing, this unfathomable place of deep and dark and hardly even explored.  Not really known.  Not well.

I am amazed at the unknowing of such depths of place.

And I amazed too at what simply amazing things are yet to be explored by this explorer of beauty.

In my one zip code town.

Right now, right here in my world at the end of my nose there is much to see.

So very much to see designed and formed by the hands of Artist God.  Creator God.

And everything He has made allows me a glimpse into knowing Him deeper.  More intimately.  Because in the daily and in the simple and mundane ordinary life He presents who He is.  He breaks through to me if I am awake.  If I want to see His art.  And I do.

How can so much wait for discovery.  How much can one day hold out, extend.

I take my camera and go.  And like a surgeon carefully removing the sutures  after healing, I look back on one day and say really?  That was one day.

Oswald Chambers writes, “Simply obey Him with unrestrained joy.”  This is what I want to learn.  This is what I want to be taught.

Unrestrained joy.

In a day I am privileged to be called Quailla’s lady friend and to hear thank you a dozen times from mouthes of sixth grade girls, smiling over greasy pizza.  Thank you.  How many times can they remember to say it.  It is like a chorus of sweetness like tree frogs after rain.  I stopped counting there was so much gratitude, it rained down love.  It was only pizza.  And I ask them about “The Hunger Games” movie and in their sixth grade wisdom they say don’t read the book first see the movie first then read the book.  Oh, okay.  And one rips the cheese off and all the toppings eating crust first then the other.  And we each have our way.  Is it two slices or one and one was so hungry no breakfast, my friend, I worry.  And what unrestrained joy I feel in being called a lady and a friend in one mouthful.

And middle one fusses and argues and pressing in on the heart,  and later says words so sweet, so tender, so joyful. This blend, this mixture, this life.

A stranger works hard, so hard, to connect lost car keys to a teenage child, my own and she reports to me her joy.  How they travel from carwash to her hands because of stranger kindness. Momma guess what happened always goes to the heart.  With joy.  Because the momma heart wants to know it all.

A receptionist extends an extra measure of grace, working out scheduling fine points to help this mother and this child.  Helping with joy.  Helping with bowed up smile on face and eye glimmer when I say my thank you’s.  Sixth grade girls are good teachers of gratitude.

And an email from a childhood friend proclaims an encounter with the one who carried me in her, who birthed me in to this God home.  She says my momma is her hero now because of what she’s witnessed.  My heart, like surgeon’s hands, removes all parts and pieces of this day tenderly in the looking back.

The Mariana Trench.  The below the ocean depths, unfathomable place holds mystery.  Unexplored. But so does this dry above ground place.  This life.

What sweet and tender heart behind the window.  She asks me, prods me, walks me through a way to save on medicine.  It is so expensive, this tool for living.  This ADHD remedy for child of mine.  She cares.  She pauses.  She suggests.  She prompts.  And it is grace and love in an unexpected place.  And its gift.

What follows is gift too.  From the Artist, Creator. Yesterday my camera and I saw these things.  I see pinks on brown and shadows.  I see weeds of beauty.  And crosses in rubble and grey and lavendar and green mingled and mixed.  And you might see beauty too.  Enjoy scrolling down and resting where you like and skipping past where you choose.  Bless you each as you look out for life today.

Wishing unrestrained Joy.