Ever have those moments that you just want to freeze and record and then when life gets tough, you can just press play and you’re back in that wonderful place? That’s how I feel when I’m on a date with Cody…or having dinner with my whole family…or on the phone with a far-away friend…or I’m writing or reading…or playing piano…or running…or dreaming about the future and everything I want to create, like books, art, music, children, a home, a story.

I truly believe that those delicious moments are glimpses into heaven that God gives us…they’re glimpses into Himself. And if we stay away from those things too long, we forget that life can be good. If we spend so much time trying to do life “right,” or even just being responsible and playing our role perfectly, we lose that ounce of breathlessness we get when we just forget those hard lines and live into our lives.

Lately I’ve been struggling through a situation I’ve never been in before. It involves sin and a close friend and the ripple effect and the need for truth. And in the middle of asking myself, What’s the right way to handle this? How do I juggle this situation in all the roles that I play? I hear God saying, LOVE. And He assure me He will show me how. I just have to be open to it and not worry about the rest or if I’m doing things right.

Last night before bed, Cody and I were talking about what we wanted to be and do…if money and time were not an issue. Sometimes we have to do that when we (more me) get bogged down by routine. So of course it made sense the conversation came on a Monday-eve.

And my answer to the question is always the same. It always involves travel…not sure why, because I can’t even rightly picture where. Sometimes I picture a little village on the outskirts of some big city. But travel means fresh, new, spontaneous, and discovery. So naturally that’d be great. 🙂 My answer also involves teaching children and young women both practical skills and the joy that comes from living life in the light of God. Teaching them that hope can be found, that they can make their families and marriages right, that they are useful and beautiful and productive. My answer involves Cody doing the same: teaching his business sense to men, showing them how create a budget and be gentle to their wives and be good to their children. I want to write about it and photograph it. Naturally, the two of us have a lot to learn ourselves. So who knows if this is all even in the future.

Our conversation helped me get down to the basics…follow God and love. And my little candle got a little brighter.

“In the girl there’s a room, in the room there’s a table, on the table there’s a candle and it won’t burn out…” -Sara Groves

“The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things–beauty, the memory of our own past–are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself, they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshipers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we never visited….” -C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory