Father's Day Camping.

In line with last year (let's call it an official tradition!), we spent a couple of nights camping this weekend.  It was a good 'ole time of togetherness, campfires, celebrating, resting,

 and exploring:).  Nothing can beat watching these kids light up around their dad…..they love to be with him so much!  

This year, we ventured over to Cape Perpetua and camped within a mile of some beautiful forest hiking and the beach.  It was green (all those photos aren't even edited).  We could have spent a week there!  Glory, glory.
The last night we set up the camera to take a family picture.  Then, Dave let the kids take a million shots of everyone doing whatever they said.  Here is one of everyone 'swimming'.  Ba!!  It made me laugh out loud:).

Babe, thanks for endeavoring to show these kids the love of our true, perfect Father.  You are doing it well!

You are priceless to us.  

Eleven Years + Eastern Oregon

Last month, Dave and I celebrated eleven years…..we spent a couple of nights in Bend, OR.  I took in my first sights of eastern Oregon, rugged and magnificent.
These little moments away, making a memory, taking a break to just be together….they are life-giving.  Being married to Dave is such a deep delight; I wouldn't even try to put words to it (at least not here).  But the work of marriage proves itself a reality in the midst of these busy days.
By God's grace, we keep sowing….and reaping. And watching these years add up is like watching art take form.  It's bigger than us….and if I think on it long enough, I just wonder why I get to be part of something so marvelous…and I come up short….but oh, so thankful.

Thanks for marrying me, Dave Mann.
I love you.

Spring Beauty.

 “The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing — to reach the Mountain, to find the place where all the beauty came from — my country, the place where I ought to have been born. Do you think it all meant nothing, all the longing? The longing for home? For indeed it now feels not like going, but like going back.” ― C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces

“Death opens a door out of a little, dark room (that's all the life we have known before it) into a great, real place where the true sun shines and we shall meet.” 
― C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces

"We do not want merely to see beauty….we want something else which can hardly be put into words- to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it."  C.S. Lewis

Saturday found me wandering in this sanctuary of a garden called The Grotto a mile up the road.  It sits on a cliff, looking out toward Washington…..surrounded by city life and busy roads…..but like an enormous, peaceful, hidden gem.  

At first, it rained, and I went undercover….spying a rainbow land right in the Columbia River for a long spell.  When it disappeared in the sunlight, I walked the garden. 

I thought about this magical wonderland God made and listened to the gospel proclaimed endlessly in my ear (thank you, Elyse Fitzpatrick). 

I thought about how this beauty grips us….and why?

I thought about how all beauty is from Him and of Him. 

And how He made us this way to worship….Him.

How unworthy we are, like the lowest citizens….wiping His feet with our tears….and getting it all wrong….and how He delights in us, a like a treasured possession….just inviting us in to sit with Him in all our weak moments.

And how one day all of it will be written on my heart forever. No more of the striving and the forgetting. Forever.

"The heavens declare the glory of the God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.  Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge.  There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard.  Their voice goes out into all the earth"  Ps 19:1-4

"Splendor and majesty are before Him, strength and beauty are in His sanctuary.  Ps 96:6

"Every experience of beauty points us to infinity." -Balthasar

SNOW.

I haven't left the house for days, and this magical little wonderland of a neighborhood, covered in white, has been the sweetest wintry respite.

I was *more than a little nervous* for Dave's long & late commute home Thursday.  This blizzard-display can only make you feel your small-ness and His great-ness.  I am so much more dependent than I think to recall…..such tiny, powerless little people.

And then we were all together to settle in for warm food and warm blankets (and a drippy roof, that showed a little weakness with all that ice on top…we couldn't blame him:).

When the snow stops falling, everything is whispery quiet.
But Friday morning held the perfect-thick-powder for sledding….
and scads of neighbors were everywhere with sleds and snowboards and cross-country skis.

The kids proved another year older.  They wanted to sled alone and (almost) never broke a tear.  I mostly just got pictures of June because the other two wouldn't stop much to breathe it all in:).

So far, we've only really run out of coffee, and Dave marched the few city-blocks for two fresh cups.

The things is, it's been really beautiful.  But there has also been the usual work of life, the bickering, the lots-of-entertaining of the kids.  And the milk will run out, and the snow will get melty-messy, and life will go on.
And these patterns become more endearing to me as the years go on.  Because the contrast of life is incessant.  I write a blog like this because I tend not to give much attention to the beautiful without stopping to really peer into it.  But the beauty abounds.  And the messes mount again.  And it's all good, because it all leads back to Him, the source of all beauty and the redeemer of messy.
I'd be lost without Him, idolizing the wonderful (and being failed again by it)…..and crumbling under the life-messes.  He brings sustaining power to beauty and hope to mess.
And, Oh!……how we need Him.

So it's Monday.  And Dave's at work and the laundry has mounted and the leaky-roof-water-bucket needs to be cleaned up.
So here's to another *wonderful* *beautiful* day…..