Silly confession #23...

My delight at what an amazing and anointed man of God he is...

is only heightened by the fact that his latest spiritual scribbling included the word "trepidation".

*Enamored sigh*

Breathe...

What a feeling. I just sealed the envelope and the last assignment is done.

Two weeks from now the ceremony will be over, the celebration will be over and life will be mine again.

I'm excited to draw near to Jesus. I'm excited to reorganize the house. I'm excited to take shifts cooking dinner. I'm excited to wake up early and go running at dawn.

I'm excited to live without limits.

I'm excited that one of the loudest ticking clocks in my head has quieted.

I'm ready to read what I want, rule my time according to His will and not a list of urgent demands. To write, to draw, to mentor teenagers, to help at church like I've never been able to before, to watch a movie with my family or to spend time with him without a trace of guilt.

I know that I'm not suddenly sinking back into another century in which hurried schedules are a thing unheard of. But after seventeen years of school dominating the horizon, I have the most delicious sense of freedom.

Life.

And a long-awaited deep breath in. A moment to breathe. What a feeling!

Silly confession #22...

Maybe I shouldn't say it, but I really do wonder if anything in heaven could really be more beautiful than the sunlight on a thousand green leaves.

Maybe there will just be a lot of trees in heaven. And a lot of sunlight.

But it's like glory distilled. And I cannot imagine anything more lovely.

A thing of beauty...

That's what the Starbucks cup on my desk is.

I stripped the little sleeve off and realized it's been awhile since I actually looked at that little white and green cup with the odd little siren on the side. Lovely.

Ok, maybe it's more the caramel latte deliciousness that it contains that pleases me... but still.
Lovely.

Mix in Bon Jovi on YouTube... and a great lyric toward the end that's the whole reason I wanted to hear that song... "alarm clock rings, 6:45, I like waking up with you on my mind..."

Good call.

Good morning.

Silly confession #21...

I absolutely love driving across the Howard Frankland and getting ocean spray on my windshield.

I love that bridge in general but much more so when it's windy and you can look out at the waves raging. It's like the ocean is churning and they have that pre-storm greyish green color, breaking in white foam. There's something wild and free and furious about it that I love. Storms and waves and wind... some of my favorite things in the world...

This is heightened still when the wind is forceful enough to carry the spray to my windshield. It makes me feel as though I've been drawn into what's happening on the water. Not just that I'm driving past it, but that I'm passing through it.

I imagine I should be annoyed by it. I waste a lot of wiper fluid on such days. But that's just another example of the way that practicality can drain the life out of things.

All warnings of ring worms or catching cold or having to peel off soaking wet clothes aside, I want to stand and be saturated in summer storms.

And all wasted wiper fluid out of mind, I love making even the slightest point of connection with the raging sea.