Time

{Me - I'm the baby}

I have been working on a large canvas now for a couple months and it has created as interesting of a process in me, as what is unfolding on the blank rectangle itself. With it I have several threads of thought running through me that I can't shake or even articulate yet. They sometimes overlap, and then sometimes they don't at all. 

My book stack next to my bed is also uncommonly tall and multi-tiered, and that is usually a dead-give-away as to what I am pondering before I have even figured it out myself. It wasn't until reading my third book on grief (two of them fiction) last week that it dawned on me I may be processing... and then I was finally able to write that post about my Grandpa that has been sitting in my heart for three years. 

Generations, the passing of time, the passing on of your dearest work and efforts to the next generation, the power of unity and the work of partnership, the power of words for life and beauty, what health in our body does for our spiritual health, God's sovereignty, foundations, the fact that our story is not about us - it's a link to someone's hopes and dreams and prayers from thirty, forty, one hundred years ago that we step into and so get to be a part of. A larger drama, a vast picture, a story unfolding. 

By nature of my day-job I am immersed in the minute details that make up life: brushing your teeth and learning how, peanut butter and jelly or marmite?, folding clothes and turning them right-side out before the hamper, please... but creating on this big canvas has stepped me back. Helped me look. Let me see.

This scripture has been written on my turquoise-framed mirror since January 1, 2010. I read it every day.

"I know that you can do all things

And that no purpose of yours 

can be thwarted."

~ Job

I wonder what our great, great, great grandparents longed for, prayed for, that you and I are helping make a reality today? I wonder what God longs for, aches for, that we are bringing to life with him in this new year? It may not look anything liked what we saw in our mind's eye or can visualize through the haze of mundane details, it may be nothing like what we planned on for our own lives  -  but in the big picture - through the lens of time - it's exactly where we are supposed to be. 

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{38 years later - I'm taking the picture}