That time you fell in love

with Philly.

uh oh.

:)

Far Country

I want you to know from what country I emigrated, and in which country my citizenship permanently and eternally resides. I’m not a native speaker of this country. No real convert is. I will always speak in broken godliness, as new paradigms reread old feelings.

// Rosaria Champagne Butterfield

Applying & Surrendering

In these weeks of relapse and rememory, I finally understood that the feeling and measure of readiness that I had been waiting these years for, were in vain. So devastating were they, the regressions, to a flimsy hard-won confidence in "progress." So telling was the collapse, of the false foundation.

Bones that have healed incorrectly over time must be re-broken.

So.

Much.

Time.

It was not right, they did not work, but it felt . . . tolerable.

Unlike the hard work of restoration, where she sought only respite.

Respite without return was no rest at all.

They could not have run with horses.

Those legs could not have walked on water.

They could not have followed to the ends of the earth.

They were crippled by their contest with God.

He still wanted to walk with her, take her hand.

Win what she'd lost.

They will rejoice in the re-setting.

They will heal in their weight-bearing.

They will work as they were made to.

The steadfast love of the Lord, is so unrelenting, so precise, even in Lam 3. So I am writing again, finally and longing just to bring, something that's of worth, that will bless your heart.

Watched Pixar's "Inside Out" Today

Lava'ed it. Cried, of course. Docter has created something special and valuable. A gamechanger –– in that it can change the conversation by providing a common vocabulary to lift an explanatory fog. He's telling the stories that will capture imagination across generations. Story arcs that depict full humanity. In Up, the protagonist was a dwelling place (house). In Inside Out, Riley('s mind) is a setting. This guy (a member of First Presbyterian Church) gets the elements of narrative.

Filing away:

• The facts and opinions boxes commingling
• Gravity moment
• Abstraction into shapes and colors and swirls
• Pearls of core memories
• Threshold moments – formative transitions
• Joy taking a backseat
• Sadness signaling for help/comfort
• Each character had a different driving emotion
• Emotions coloring memories & retouching them
• (In/voluntary) memories affecting emotions
• The troublemakers in the subconscious

CW EL PL JD DB AB

Outgrowing pains

The [boys'] trauma of leaving the orphanage was unexpected to me because I knew how much better these boys' life would soon be. I thought they knew too. But they had no idea. They couldn't conceive of anything other than the status quo. My whispering to my boys, "You won't miss that orphanage" is only a shadow of something I should have known already. Our Father tells us that we too are unable to grasp what's waiting for us––and how glorious it really is. It's hard for us to long for an inheritance to come, a harmonious Christ-ruled universe, when we've never seen anything like it. 

We just can't imagine "the glory that is to be revealed to us" (Rom. 8:18). That's why it's so important to have "the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints" (Eph. 1:18).

// Russell Moore

If I only knew what You knew.
Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations.

May Flowers & Touchstones

This spring has been so peculiarly and particularly beautiful to me.

Every yellow flash of forsythia. Fivesythia. Sixsythia. Sevensythia. Fine, Eightsythia.

Giant Magnolia petals.

Every friend who is moving on. The babies on their way. Every change, attended with joy and not fear.

Not anymore. Never alone, and never afraid.

Preparing to say goodbye to my brownstone home of six (!) years. And the garden. Candles every night.

Grilling five out of seven days in a week.

The spontaneous garden parties. The children who have scribbled on its tiles with chalk.

Sending friends away for four months of well-deserved rest. Their absence blessing, providing for, and housing my big sister and me.

Mountainclimbing with her. Sifting through this season. With flaming hots a means of grace.

The bleeding hearts, tulips, hyacinths, hydrangeas that have returned.

Sinking into winter grief that did not in the end overcome them.

Enjoying pursuit.

Thank you for being so clear about what you wanted and expected. It makes me certain, that I don't have that to give, to you, now. How free and fair it felt to say that.

And to permit, nothing that you wouldn't want me to do with my brother. Nothing that you wouldn't do with a child in your care. How that was honest and generous.

Change.

I look at the photographs I have taken over the last few years.

And I see how life has become more colorful, beautiful, precious and memorable to me.

The sparkle. The gala that came and went. How God sent Bailey to help me.

Creating a machine that did not exist before. Being satisfied at my production.

How Nikelle, Peggy, and Jonny, were living with me altogether during Mother's Day weekend. Cuddle puddles. Family.

These DC two who have captivated my interest. Gifted me with a category for someone I could begin to consider forsaking all others for.

Chasing a lost child all the way around the world. Cinque Terre, Venice, Cebu, Manila, Guam.

Chasing chickens.

Sharing stories.

The calendar pages turn and turn. They were not wasted or given over. Even the pages I lost, Dad, you counted.

I am living in a kaleidoscope.

The beauty is dizzying.

It has not always been so. It will not always be so. And that's okay.

MT

I shared my testimony at morning service today as part of the MT training year.