And, truly, I have so much to be grateful for. The time since my last post has been a healthy reminder of that. Among other things, I was able to take some days away from life to enjoy some road-tripping with my family. It was warmly nostalgic, to pile into an RV and set out across the country again. And amidst the mountains and pines of Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado I was reminded of so many things I love: so many things to be grateful for.
I will try to find words for them: the many happinesses that found their home in my chest during those days and many days after.
Of course, those days and the ones after were not all happiness. No day on earth ever is. There were the moments of stress from being too crowded with people, even people you love. There are still, occasionally, the personal slip ups and moments of sadness that settle over my chest, with their companions of bitterness and ingratitude. But that makes saying these things that much more important. Because the happiness is that much more precious for them, and I shall never learn to cast of my bitternesses until I learn to be grateful.
So here's for trying, in the wake of His Grace.
{72} For familiar sleeping faces. Cramped or no, there is something delightful in rolling over and seeing the sleeping expression of a sibling or parent. I'm not sure how to put it in words: the expanding, happy feeling of "Ah, that's how they look asleep. I'd forgotten."
{73} Thank God for memory: the reminiscent mind-pictures, both blurry and clear. How those little round, white roofed sheds against the Montana skyline remind me of the gers of Mongolia. How I can still see her sleeping face: the little one who was all my responsibility that night—that little, delightful weight of a child asleep on my chest. How I can still hear the creek, laughing at our antics as we played along it as children: picking flowers, hunting mushrooms, killing snakes, skipping stones.
{74} Thank you, Elyon, for mornings of being the first riser. There is something solidly satisfying in being awake before the rest—in sitting up in a house full of sleepers. Partially because it makes it sink in further that you are sitting in a house full of people, and, to a soul prone to loneliness, that is never not a delightful thing. And partially because there is some magic to it: a lightness of thought and feeling that seems to make you float out the cabin window and out into the horizon of stone and pine, where the sun is rising over the mountain tops.
{75} Praise God for the chance to stand in sight of wild beasts. I found myself a small thing again, watching the Moose mother and her little one walking slowly among the grass. Their long legs and heavy elegance begged to be watched, admired. One's own mind cannot be a heavy, huge thing in the face of that; it is reduced again to simply a single human mind in a massive universe where giants dwell. I have seen my Behemoth,* and how small I am. Thank God.
{76} For the fragrance of rain and pines: a mixture I can call nothing short of majestical.**
{77} Thank you, my God, to be able to be wrapped in a blanket, listening to the rain and feeling chilled in the brisk mountain air. And all this in July.
{78} You have all my thanks today, Elyon, for the way I can be surprised by how much love I have in me for someone. Not because this makes me a better person. But because all this love could never come from me; it is all Yours, from so long being poured into by Your endless grace. And while I must be careful of pride, there is something worth having pride in, when you find yourself seeing a face you have not seen in too long or talking about someone you don't talk about often, and all at once there is a flood of feeling in you: a rush of so much warmth. And it is not that you did not know you loved them; it's simply that you are caught off guard by how much of the feeling there is—that you love anyone to that extent. By God's grace, the love of man can become a thing of miraculous size: another Behemoth of His making.
*Job 40:15-24
**This reference is mostly just a little laugh for me, but to those bothered by the non-word, I'll just take a moment to put in a recommendation. The reference is to a wonderful movie called Hunt for the Wilderpeople, which I would recommend to almost anyone. It also has a rating that asks for some viewer discretion, but past the language and a few unfortunate conversations, this is a movie that can both make your heart ache with feeling and also make your sides ache with laughter. Five star recommendation ;)
