Snap By Snap

I almost just deleted my previous post (9/14/10). Mostly because I was thinking it didn't jive well enough with my "snap by snap" blog theme. Not enough about pictures - too many rambling thoughts. But then I re-read it and liked it again, so it stays. It's my blog, so I guess I can do that, right? Re-reading my ramblings led me to some other ramblings by a much more profound thinker - C.S. Lewis. My steps feel weary lately, and this quote from Mere Christianity was just exactly what I needed:

The real problem of the Christian life comes where people do not usually look for it. It comes the very moment you wake up each morning. All your wishes and hopes for the day rush at you like wild animals. And the first job each morning consists simply in shoving them all back, in listening to that other voice, taking that other point of view, letting that other larger, stronger, quieter life come flowing in. And so on, all day. Standing back from all your natural fussings and frettings; coming in out of the wind.

We can only do it for moments at first. But from those moments the new sort of life will be spreading through our system: because now we are letting Him work at the right part of us. It is the difference between paint which is merely laid on the surface, and a dye or stain which soaks right through. He never talked vague, idealistic gas. When He said, 'Be perfect,' He meant it. He meant that we must go in for the full treatment. It is hard; but the sort of compromise we are all hankering after is harder - in fact, it is impossible. It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.

We are so easily distracted by our list of to-do's every morning, that we fail to come in out of the wind - to look for the quiet. To choose it.

More pictures next time . . .

I've been thinking a lot about change.

Progress.

Development.

Growth.

Improvement.

Maybe it's because I'm working on the strategic plan for work and seeing how far we've come (and how far we have to go). Maybe it's because our strong willed daughter will be 19 tomorrow, and I'm so proud of how far she's come. Maybe I'm just weird and think about things like this.

The Journey is . . . the not-so-exact science of transforming a life, a job, or a family into what it God created it to be. And oddly enough, what keeps coming to my mind is the phrasing from one of Amy's Read Aloud Bible Story Books (highly recommended, by the way).


These particular books are written for preschool age children, and so they have a lot of repetition and simple wording. Instead of saying "The  pharisee was coming down the hill," the Good Samaritan story in Amy's book allows us to hear with the ears of the poor, beaten man . . .who's steps are coming? Will those steps lead someone here? Or will they go the other way?  Simple, right? When we speak to children we understand the need to reduce story to its most basic elements. At it's most basic, every journey is made of steps. But as adults, we see journeys as leaps. We fly here or there, we drive here or there; most of the time we think only of where we want to arrive, not how we will get there. We forget that all of our journeys, all of our progress has been made of steps.

Mark has a saying that I love. In parenting, he says, "You aim for 25."  It is a journey, and the steps are important. Take the steps that will bring you to the day when you are able to look at your 25 year old and know they'll make it in the world. Remember this when your 15 year old is rolling their eyes at your. Your goal is not a perfect teenager. Thank heavens, right? This saying helped me to value steps in the right direction over perfection in parenting.

We want perfection, but we can't have it. Instead we are given the journey.

Step, step, step, step.

When I was a teen, my youth group went on "wilderness trips" meant to help us on our spiritual journey. We backpacked, we canoed, we spent nights alone in the wild . . . and we ran. One trip we did a ten mile run.  I was pretty much a couch potato kind of kid (shocked, aren't you?), but I ran. I was 15. We were running out in the middle of nowhere on some road with beautiful mountains running alongside us. I remember looking at those mountains and thinking, praying, "If God can create those incredible mountans, He's strong enough to help me take one more step, and one more, and one more." I managed to keep moving faster than a walk all the way to the finish - - and I just about died. Something changed in me that day, though. In that very basic, physical test, God had shown me that he indeed could help me, and that I could accomplish with him so much more than I could alone. I still think of that run when I begin to be discouraged, or when I want perfection and instead I am given a long journey. He's still the God who made the mountains, and I'm still the couch potato counting on His strength when my steps falter.


Step, step, step, step.

There's a lot of contentment in the steps, if you are willing to see the meaning in them. When you start to see them add up, you see the substance they have. Seeing our daughter maturing, seeing our marriage deepen, seeing a workplace transforming - - all of these things are made of steps. Trusting or weak, faltering or striding - it is absolutely amazing to see what a step can become. I have so many more steps to take.

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us throw off the sin that so easily entangles us, and run with endurance the race that God has set before us.  Hebrews 12:1  

My mother-in-law introduced me to a saying: Get the stink blowed off! This is defined as the need to shake things up, get out of the house, and do something different. I'm convinced that if I had a strong enough microscope, I could look at my husband's DNA and see a gene engraved with the blow the stink off trait engraved on it. That man is always ready to get out and go do something different the usual routine. And so it happened this past weekend that we did just that.

Most of August it was stinking hot and dry (even the weatherman uses this terminology. It's the only fitting descriptor for 94 degrees and 90% humidity with no precipitation), but Saturday was only in the 80's. Practically balmy. So we picked up Mark's parents and drove towards McCormick's Creek State Park.


We have driven all over the country the last two summers and seen all kinds of terrain, but a drive through Indiana's countryside is still breathtaking. The seed corn is drying on the stalks, the grass is mostly brown, the soybeans are deep green, and the trees are a beautiful green - even where they have begun to fade toward fall.
Before we got to McCormick's Creek, we turned at the sign for Cataract Falls  - a place we'd never stopped before. Did I mention that we'd had a drought for the previous four weeks? Cataract might be the wrong name for this time of year. The picture above is what it looks like normally (not my photo). However, the picture below was what it looked like on Saturday. We obviously need to go back n the fall!


One plus for Cataract Falls is that it boasts a covered bridge. I never get tired of these silly things. Maybe because they are on the list of things I didn't see much of (or any?) in California. This one was built with $2000 worth of supplies. Major wow. Can you even build a deck for that now? Another interesting fact was that the reason they covered bridges was because covered bridges lasted much longer than the naked sort. I always thought it had something to do with the snow! Silly California girl.