Not where I've been, but where I'm going

A friend has recently reminded me how nice it is to connect and share your thoughts, so I've returned to my blog and hope to be more faithful with it. As the year begins, I'm struck by thoughts reflecting on quite an eventful year and at my most grandiose casting a vision for the future. I look around my bedroom at the pictures that grace our walls and they are a great collection of countries around the world. Egypt, France, New Zealand, Austria, Oregon, New Mexico... and those were all just in the past two years. It has been eventful, but does it say something about me? I think it says I'm intrigued by the world out there. I want to see other places and experience the best our amazing world has to offer. Each place is different. There is beauty out there and I find God in that. I'm constantly amazed by what He has created. I love the moments where I'm struck by it and catch my breath in thankfulness that I get to be a part of such an incredible work of art.

I look forward to getting back out there in the world, but my times lately have been very much in one place. Our home. My days might be considered mundane of late, as a new mommy and housewife, but I really enjoy them. Looking at the soft fall of my son's cheek, seeing my husband reflected in his miniature features, the contented relaxation of his hand as he falls asleep, or the recognition in his eyes when he sees me squeezes my heart to a bursting point. What a blessing!

Yet as I putter around my home, I can't help but wonder what the future holds. I am at an amazing present, but this is not necessarily where I want to be in ten years. I would like to be in a small town. Somewhere where my husband can see snow each year and doesn't have to drive more than an hour to snowboard. I want both of us to be working as much as we want at jobs we enjoy. I want to see him fly again. Hopefully Gabe will be doing well in school and we will be reading to him every night or helping with homework and we will still pray over our meals each night as we eat together. Once a year I'd like to be going on a family mission trip, even if it is to another American town. I'd like to be better at finishing one project before beginning another and maybe have an organized closet. In the realm of the possible but not necessarily probable, I'd like to have written a book, the great american novel, not that I think it will be published, but I think it would be fun to try and I'd like to be more fluent in Spanish than I am today.

Who knows where we will be, but mostly I'd like to be there with my Jesus, my son, and the man who is my love. :)

Cardiac Unrest

I was struck by the realization the other day that the heart is the only muscle cell in the body that does not require rest. It cannot fatigue. Pumps for 60, 70, even 100 years without a stop. That's pretty amazing. It gives me life all day everyday! Here's a verse that says a lot about what God does for our heart and following that is a poem it inspired in me...

Ezekiel 36:25-26
25 I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. 26 I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.

eternal cardiac transplant
stone dead to pistoning flesh
pumping strength, life
indefatigable
cardiac muscle cannot fatigue
it does not have to rest
it cannot grow weary
most efficient,
perpetually active machine
does not strain or sprain
just keeps going
pushing life to the limits
the ends of my body
into the smallest knooks & crannies
the littlest finger
to take life out
return with waste & bring renewal
80,000 times a day, everyday
waking and sleeping
running a mile
counting change
without me ever telling it to
I receive life
from inside myself
through my heart
given by God
I find Jesus there.
Indefatigable.