pictures and thoughts

These are some shots from a sweet time we had with friends recently. You can't hear the music but it was beautiful. There really are some special, amazing people in our life. I'm thankful. 

Just so you know, I am mainly posting the rest of this to remind myself of some important things. I don't want to forget what God is teaching me right now. Recently I posted about how we were going to go camping and it was going to be a time of re-unification and remembering and planning for our family. Then I wrote about how it turned out to be too cold at night to camp with little Piper. We went instead to stay at our neighbor's cozy lake house in Thomson... anyway, I didn't write about this, but the whole trip was one of those things where our brokenness was just staring us right in the face. It was like everything came to a head in those couple of days... our selfishness, our ugliness, our tender areas of hurt being pressed. And it stormed, it rained. It was cold. The whole time. The weather was like a physical demonstration of what was going on between us. But the tension eventually broke... things were confessed and brought to the light.


I drove back through Thomson on the way to visit my parents on Monday. God met me on the way and showed me something... instead of this grey, rainy, cold landscape, everything I saw was beautiful and green with life. I felt like he spoke to me that morning. These painful things we are working through are part of the hard process of growth and discipline that is evidence of God's gracious work in our life. It's not like our ugliness and junk just comes out of nowhere... it was there all along, we just didn't see it. God is the master Artist, and He is stripping away the things that are not pleasing to his eyes. He is making us new. He's giving us life. Sometimes it is easy to forget... but we are in it for the long haul, and his plans for us are to make us reflect his image more. He is cultivating us like a garden and the rain is part of the process. This cultivation involves discipline. The writer of Hebrews said, "... but He disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness. For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it." The fact that these things are brought to the light gives me hope because it is evidence that God is at work in our life. He began a good work in us and He will carry us, He will save us, He will finish it. 


I have a couple other observations from what is happening in our life right now. One of them has to do with romance. As I think about what I thought marriage was like before I got married, I thought it was all about being on top of things and getting things right in life. I never knew until I was in the middle of it that it means being bound, as a sinner, to another sinner, and staying. It means having the hard, difficult, sweet gift of experiencing and extending grace together. Romance, for me, is not about finding a perfect man and sailing away into the ever after (he's the prefect man for me, but he is not perfect). It is about being committed to this person and making their life your life, come what may. It is about fighting brokenness together, seeing God's love triumph because sin never has the last word in our life. It means building my life and identity on the fact that God loves me perfectly, that He is my spouse, and because of that I am free to love my husband even when he fails, and he can love me freely even when I fail. I know God brought me together to be with this man. But he didn't make us instantly free of our junk when we got married. We have to work through those things together.


These are precious things that I wrote. I haven't written anything this personal on my blog in a while, because as it has grown, I backed off of writing about our family's inner workings. I just wanted to record these things to have them as a reminder to me and our family. One day I may be the only person who reads this blog, and I want to look back and know that what I wrote was real. I want to see the big picture of what God has brought us through. I am seeing God's strong hands hold me and keep me. Even though this is a hard time, it is sweet in so many ways. I am thankful for this discipline in my life. It is honest, God's truth brought to bear on my wandering heart. 


Be back again soon with an introduction to my friend Tyler, the lovely girl that's helping me this summer with the lightnest shop. Maybe she'll do a guest post (that's a hint Tyler). And a follow up to the film camera saga.


xo 
paige