When the wind and the wildflowers danced...

On April 14, 15 years ago I married my favorite guy in the world.  He helps me be brave when I'm not feeling it and reminds me that this too shall pass when I'm afraid it won't.  I can't imagine anyone better for me and I can't imagine ever doing the things I'm doing without him by my side - sometimes cheering, sometimes nudging, sometimes pushing or pulling me on.  We are different in so many ways, yet share so much in common.  It's the best of opposites attracting and great minds thinking alike all at the same time.


He is stable and I am dramatic. 
We both love God and God's church.
He can multi-task and I have a one-track mind.
We both are messy.  (hmmm... that's not such a great thing...)

He grew up all over the world and I grew up in the San Joaquin Valley.

We both want to go live in Peru.
He's an extroverted introvert and I'm an extroverted extrovert.
But we both love quiet vacations away from crowds.
I stare at the ocean and think big philosophical thoughts.
He stares at the ocean and thinks "This would be a great place to build a house."
We both dream.


And that's how we spent a couple of days earlier this week...  enjoying the mostly uninhabited coast of California, watching the wildflowers and grasses dance, the seagulls soar, the waves roll and the elephant seals lie around and throw sand on themselves.  On Monday we were sitting in the van enjoying the scenery when some music came on that seemed to fit the landscape so perfectly it was as if the grasses and wind were dancing along on purpose.  That's what inspired this video.  It's a souvenir of sorts of the day we spent wandering around the coast without a schedule or anyone asking if we were there yet or declaring they were starving or any other such emergencies.  Everywhere I looked I saw creation dancing along with us.  And it was lovely. It was fun to dream about making a video of it all with the same music we were listening to and even more fun to actually put it together while Lowell was driving us home and see it turn out just exactly how I'd imagined it.  


So if you have a few more minutes, you can see what it looks like when the wind and the waves and the wildflowers and waterfalls dance...  God is the Master Choreographer to be sure.

Happy anniversary, Babe.  I THANK GOD FOR YOU.  And I love you so incredibly much.

Day 32

Creative, Colorful Creation

We came home today after a couple of days at the coast of California celebrating our 15th anniversary.  It was beautiful.  The flowers were beautiful.  (My mom always said they were prettier at the coast than anywhere else!)  : )

Here's a sample of the rainbow we saw...

     

   

  

Matthew 6:25-34 

 ²⁵ “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? ²⁶ Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? ²⁷ Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?
   ²⁸ “And why do you worry about clothes? 
See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. ²⁹ Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. ³⁰ If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? 
³¹ So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ ³² For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. ³³ But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. ³⁴ Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

Day 31

Not Much To Say

I'm at the end of a super relaxing day and don't want to ruin it by overanalyzing and overexplaining it.  But I'm thankful for a husband of almost 15 years to have shared it with.

God is good and His creation is amazing.  : )  See you tomorrow.

Day 30

Thank-FULL

**This was originally written and posted in May 2008.  It's a favorite of mine I thought I'd share again.  : ) **

Last weekend we went to Cambria (on the coast of California, a couple of hours away from where we live). And God taught me a lesson about thankfulness. On Saturday afternoon we went to the beach. I had this big plan to build a big sandcastle. We had buckets, shovels… we were set! Except the beach we went to didn’t have great sandcastle-building sand like I remembered. It had pebbles. Lots and lots and lots of pebbles and a little bit of sand. And once we got there and we discovered that Lowell was right and I was wrong, we couldn’t just go somewhere else, because we were waiting for Lowell's brother and his family to meet us there and we didn’t have cell service.

We sat down and tried to build a castle with the little bit of sand that was there, but it collapsed. So we just played in the pebbles and dug holes and fed and chased sea gulls and searched for “gems”. Mikaela had quite a beautiful collection of pretty rocks (her "gems") and by the end of our time there, we were all hunting with her. Well, in the middle of my gem hunting, I found a real treasure: thankfulness.

About a week ago, I was asking God about my tendency toward regret & disappointment. For example, I was really sad when I found out we could have sent Timothy a camera and other gifts when he was referred to us. I wished we had known and was in a small way grieving the loss of pictures we could have had if we had sent something earlier. But God showed me (as I pondered the regret issue) that a big part of the solution is TRUST. I needed to trust Him that it was fine and maybe even good (for whatever reasons) that we hadn’t sent anything before. If it hadn’t been fine or good, He would have done something about it. So I could trust Him, grieve what we had missed and move on.

That day at the beach, after we had been there a while having a very nice time, I was still wishing I would have remembered the beach wasn’t sandy so we could have gone somewhere else. Then God opened my eyes. Toby and Lowell were having fun trying to get the waves to make water go into a hole they had dug. And Mikaela was in paradise!!!!! She loves pretty little things as much as anything in the world and she was surrounded by them! And they were free! And she could collect as many as she wanted! And her mom was helping! And I was on the beach, listening to and watching the waves (one of my favorite things in the world to do). What in the world was I doing still wishing for something else? And that’s where I discovered thankfulness. When I stopped wishing for something else and started being thankful for what I had found instead, the regret and disappointment started to evaporate. And I also realized that thanks-GIVING is really quite easy when you’re thank-FULL to start with.

Y, Melissa

Sabbath

Extravagant Beauty

Yesterday and last night the sky was amazing.  I kept watching big, white, billowing clouds floating by outside and it almost made sense that somewhere along the way people decided heaven must be a land of clouds.  As the day wore on, the sky just got more and more beautiful.  I had a couple of errands to run so ended up out driving around as the sun sank lower in the sky behind an amazing display of beauty.  Extravagant beauty!

In the East, there was fresh snow (April snow!) on the Sierra Nevadas.  In the South and North there were fluffy clouds with the sun still shining on them.  And the western horizon...  wow.  I'm sorry I don't have pictures for you.  There were layers upon layers of clouds with the sun shining through from behind and it was amazing.  It reminded me of a sunrise I watched in Texas last year when I also was overwhelmed by God's extravagant love for me.  

I sat in the grocery store parking lot for a few extra minutes and just watched.  I watched people hurrying around and the glorious sky and wondered how many people were noticing God's extravagant display just over their heads.  And I took a few minutes to enjoy it with God.

I've been more intentional for the last months about taking Sabbath time.  I'm taking time to rest and enjoy God's creation and I think it's affecting the rest of my days as well.  I'm learning to slow down and enjoy the beauty around me, knowing that somehow what needs to get done will get done and that WONDER is a life-giving thing.

I hope you take some time this weekend to look around you - whether you are inside or outside, alone or with others, in silence or sound, sitting or moving - and that you see some marvelous displays of God's glory in creation and in people made in the image of God.  I'm sure God will be happy you noticed.  And I think you will be too.

Day 29

Friday!

I was going to try to post something thoughtful right now, but just changed my mind.  : )  Even though most of you won't read this until tomorrow or later, I'm doing a tribute to Friday.  Because today was Friday and Lowell just showed me a really cool Friday video.

Now.  Some of you are afraid of what might be coming because you know who Rebecca Black is.  This girl became an almost overnight youtube sensation (though not in the best way) for her music video "Friday."  (Click here to get the gist of the video or the rest of this won't make as much sense to you...)

I think she's a decent singer, but honestly the lyrics are just so very, very bad.  The biggest problem is how the song gets stuck in my head.  Running through my head in the middle of the night kind of stuck!  

There are lots of people making their own versions of the song now and THIS ONE is so fun.  So THIS is my tribute to Friday.  I hope yours was a nice one.  : )

Day 28