Maybe there is nothing interesting about carrying on.

Free donut Sunday at work. Brand new running shoes bright with the promise of the miles I will run this year. Combing my hair. Drinking extra water after giving blood. Singing along to songs in the car with Noah.

Sometimes you try really hard to create something extraordinary that will take you somewhere else and you get lightheaded standing up. But there is reward in being faithful in ugly, slow, boring January seasons.

I looked around the room last night, waiting, and hoping for something to take the breath out of my lungs and to feel something serious. It didn't happen. But when I got home, in the quiet moments with a shot of Captain Morgan, I stood on the back porch in my bathrobe. Izzy had dug out an old family telescope and left it out there, and I tried to find the huge-but-waning moon. In the valley, you can't see much of the stars for the city lights, so I knew it wasn't going to be the Atacama Desert like Moss talked about a few months back but you might always underestimate the Moon that you will find.

The air did get caught in my lungs; and I love that my gut reaction is always, "Oh Father, how magnificent--how big you really are." Because He set the moon in the sky, close enough for us to see. For us to somehow get in a spaceship and visit like a neighbor. How large the universe is-- it keeps going and baffles the men on NPR and in front of auditoriums full of college students. Whether or not they admit it.
I pity Moss, to think he got here by an accident and try to sleep with that every night, and not have a relationship with the God who formed him out of dirt.

The  craters  on  the  moon.
I could see them close as if they were just Provo or Logan's distance away.

Maybe there is nothing interesting in carrying on.
But you put on your pajamas at night, take your pills and brush your teeth, and you get one day closer to being finished marveling in faith. Closer to being awestruck face to face. And it's nice to check that off of the calendar.

(The Atacama Desert. It deserves a trip to Chile.)

she makes the sound the sea makes to calm me down

"You had a bad day, Rachel," he says, looking at the numbers, pulling his mouse unnecessarily high off the desk as he clicks through spreadsheets of red and green.
"I'm kind of discouraged," I told him.
"Powers are really your Achilles heel. You just gotta double check," he turns to me.
To triple check.
I don't know how all of the pieces of life come together.
My dad is standing over a frozen patch of our backyard at this point, and dumping hot water out of the hot tub, to soften the ground. To make another winter grave for a dearly loved dog-friend.

"I can be strong," I say in different ways, sitting in the front seat of my car for two hours with a friend who needs someone to listen to her.
I whisper it, while she talks, to the sun that is slowly creeping towards 4:00p.m. above the mountains.
"And it was like Bill says, the curtain was pulled back and I caught a glimpse of the glory of God, Rachel."

It caught me off guard.

I thought to myself, when was the last time I caught a glimpse? Or even looked for a glimpse? I forgot that those moments even happened, and how many months have I wasted in the last 4 or 5 years not trying to be vulnerable enough to ask for those?

I want to get invested. I want to wake up.
Here I am, Lord. Show me a new thing.

On the Farm

Vacation officially started. Redbox rentals, brand new tooth brush, Aussie friends, Mac n Cheese, Captain Morgan and a beautiful snowy day.

God has richly blessed me.

quotes Friday

"I might have to never remember that."
-Elaine's cousin Alvin, to Moss who was trying to give a science lesson none of us wanted to hear

"Well, babies probably like water, because they're humans too."
-Megan

Me: Has anybody been nice to that girl, that's a girl?
Izzy: Yeah. Emma invited her to live with them.

"I don't cry here."
"Nope."
"I cry at home."
- 3 year old talking optimistically to her mom at Target

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The state of my life is that I wish I was always working, or always sleeping. I think I will want a personal life again in a few weeks.

I think.

I'm going to take a vacation and stay at a farm for a few days and pretend I'm deeper in the country than I am. I'll feed the ducks and turkeys and chickens. I'll muddy my boots. I'll read books.

It's a good life, and you can really feel it if you breathe in and out and look around and laugh at how hard it is.

This is nothing like it was in my room, in my best clothes

I don't have much to say. The little I do have catches in my throat when I walk down the hallways.

I went back to the early morning shifts and wearing my glasses, and the astonishing, relieving quiet before the sunrise.

I will be the basic version. I'll smile and be kind and hold my head up.