Beauty everywhere

Have you ever noticed how, when you are looking for something, you notice a lot more than you otherwise would?

I was playing disc golf with Josh today. While we looked for our poorly thrown discs in the "out-of-bounds" section of the course, we noticed all sorts of beauty. Really? Beautiful winter? Trees without leaves, a dead-leaf carpeted forest, fallen limbs, and roots protruding from the earth could all seem like "ugly" things that aren't what you may think of when I say, "It's a beautiful day."

I think that if we go through life always looking for something, we'll end up finding a lot more than we bargained for and be ever-changed because of our search. In this life, if we search for God, if we seek Him, we'll find Him in the oddest of places. We'll see his face everywhere. We'll experience His goodness as we seek Him. And, His light will shine through the wintered North Carolina woods, illuminate the beauty that was present all along, remind us to never stop noticing Him, and correct us from our thought on how He is "supposed" to make Himself known.

Dare all the more to always seek Him, never miss Him, and constantly remember where and how you've seen Him!

"You will seek me and you'll find me when you search for me with all of your heart"

Vines

Well, we made it to Charlotte, North Carolina. After a few days of getting settled in, I started work. Work here is different than my work in Portland. So far I have been working with Josh on one major project in, what the business has come to call, the back forty. Basically, behind the barn where the wedding receptions are held, is a section (or should I say was) of nasty weed-invested, underbrushed-over, unlevel, and viney woods. Our job-clean dem woods! And…clean we did. It took us about 5 full hard days of work to complete the task; however, we finished it. Together we completely rebuilt those woods.

Spending 8 or so hours a day in the woods with vines, sticks, leaves, and some yard tools has really caused me to think a lot about my own life. Not only has my entire world been turned upside down by moving across country to a place that is culturally, topographically, cost-of-livingly, and climately different, but also my job is way different. I no longer go into nasty or clean homes. My customers don’t range from drug-using baby mommas to wealthy high class young professionals anymore; instead, I work with my brother everyday and spend a decent amount of time out in nature. Obviously this is just my job these days, and I’m certain it will be a little bit different every week from here on out. But, what I came here to say, doesn’t have to do with me working with Josh or changing my life around by moving my family, rather, I’ve come to talk about vines.

Man, we have pulled down some big vines. After we cleared out one big section of the woods in the first few days, we realized that there was a ton of growth that needed to be removed. In many ways, more than we calculated. You see vines are an interesting type of growth. Vines sprout up, work their way across the ground with little contact or disruption to it, and then climb the first object they come to thus setting a different trajectory of growth. Apart from the interesting nature of how vines grow without disturbing too much ground mixed with the little amount of energy that they need to live, vines suck! We had to pull so many vines off and out of trees. They wrap themselves cylindrically all up and around the trees. They weave their way through the smaller sticks and weeds that are on the bed of the woods. They get all tangled up in everything thus making them super hard to get rid of.

Vines use the strength of their surrounding neighbors in order to gain life and energy. I vine would die if it stayed right where it sprouted out of the ground; it needs other plants or structures to survive. But…there’s always a catch. There’s a cost. The vine’s life comes at the expense of the life of the tree or other live structure that it’s “stealing” energy from. It takes a long time and a lot of vines to destroy the life of a tree but it doesn’t take long for them to get all wrapped up in a tree taking away a lot of its natural beauty and changing its intended growth.

I definitely have some vines in my life. There are some things in my life that I’ve let go, thinking things like, “It won’t be hard to change this later.” These vines (as I will call them) have slowly worked their way up and around my life. I’ve noticed them in the last year or so and have begun to slowly cut them off. But, when you pull a larger vine off the side of a tree, it doesn’t come easy and definitely leaves its mark. I almost felt like I was hurting some of the trees as I pulled the bigger vines off of them; it was as if these vines had spent enough time with the tree that they were part of them by now. The vines grip themselves to the trees and cling so that they won’t come off easily by the wind or just natural movements in the trees.

My vines haven’t and won’t come off easily. But they need to be removed. I know it’s going to hurt. It already has begun to hurt thinking of how many vines I’ve got to get rid of over the next few years.

But, that’s why we came to Charlotte. A lot of things about our lives, my life, have changed. Many more changes await me. As I shed, rip, tear, and cut away the vines that have been “stealing” away my life, I ask that you’ll join me and dare all the more to aggressively attack the things that are waging war against you and the betterment of your relationship with the Gardener. He’ll do the hard work, we just gotta keep standing.

Gray-world, sunlight, hope, and tattoos

In Portland, the sun comes out of the clouds less than it hides behind them.

In many ways, Portland is a dark city. But if you've ever lived in Portland, you know how gratifying the sunlight is after waiting months to see her face. The sun comes out and Portland awakes from its depressive sleep. Dogs, frisbees, joggers, outdoor patio seating, festivals, golf courses, and people come out of every crevice and crack. Sunlight has a way of making everything full of life. If the sun has been away for a long time, its life-giving effect is amplified when it does finally come out.

We've come to call Portland (our previous home), gray-world! It feels like your living in a rain cloud for the better (or worse) part of your year. Gray, gray, gray! But then, as always, the sunshine comes after the rain! When it does, it's amazing. Portland can be one of the greatest places to be in the summertime (or whenever those clouds decide to rescind and let the sunlight through!). I have said countless times, during one of these amazing sunlit days in Portland, "I think Portland is the best place in the world on days like this!"

In many ways, the state of Meredith and I's lives can be compared to state of the sun in Portland. While in Portland, Meredith and I have, both together and individually, experienced some of the most "sunlit" moments of our lives. As I look back over the incredible life-changes that have taken place in Portland, I am humbled and thankful for our time there and am so touched by those we've come to know and love. Some of our brightest moments include incredible friends/family (the kind that leave an permanent indent in your life), super fun college experiences, great work environments, amazing dates, engagement, marriage, college degrees, first child, second child, first "real" job, and some awesome restaurants! We've had a bunch of sunlight in our lives. But, beneath the surface and, many times, on the surface, we've experienced profound depths of pain, insecurity, anxiety, depression, self hate, disappointment, loss, emptiness, and sin. If the sun was out for too long, the darkness would certainly come full steam ahead. The greatest and worst moments of my, Meredith's, and our lives have taken place in Portland, Oregon.

It's been kind of difficult for me to really process and understand most of this until we left for our new home in Charlotte, North Carolina. I knew that Portland was a dark place for us, but it wasn't until we got about an hour and a half away from Portland when the sun beamed through our van's windows onto our faces and relief, excitement, anticipation, joyfulness, and life were realized again-hope was restored!

The crazy thing about hope is that its both a feeling and a state of mind. You can choose to have hope, or it can sneak up on you and take you over. The beautiful thing about true Hope is that He is always there, He always knows, He always loves, He always accepts, and He constantly beckons for you and me to join Him. I love Hope!

Meredith and I both now have tattoos that say hope. We got them to symbolize that, even when the darkness seems to outweigh the light, Hope is always there. They serve as a reminder (an altar) of God's work in our lives. For a long time, we wanted to leave Portland. Life kept happening to us and it seemed hard to get traction. Then, just when we thought we had a "way out," God came in a threw a wrench in our whole plan and laid Charlotte on our laps. We are so grateful that God would choose us for this adventure and we're certain that He is behind us.

Sometimes He wants us to just realize His presence and enter a state of being where we are consumed by Him, and other times He finds us and, just because He loves us, takes us over and consumes us. I love it when Hope consumes me!"


We live on the edge
On the edge of a darkness

Daylight comes to meet you on the road
Like a prodigal son, a prodigal hope
That you gave up on when you were young
Yeah, but daylight is coming on
 -John Mark Mcmillan "Daylight"

Dare all the more to seek Hope!