in mountains

A few Mt. Adams shots from my past couple visits home that had yet to make it to the blog.

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There are so many ideas swirling in my brain, waiting to make it to a page, but they're still so clumsy and undeveloped, like baby birds fledged too soon. I sometimes hate this stage of mental processing, when there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to my thoughts and yet I know that somehow they all interconnect. But I have also begun to get used to it, begun to accustom myself to flailing a little, to taking the time to slow down and listen and breathe and wait for God to clarify and redirect. I have started to appreciate the in-between period when I can both see the hand of God in the process of working and wait expectantly to see the result.

God has been teaching me, and this place of learning is such a delightful and refreshing place to be. For awhile I thought I was utterly isolated, irredeemable; I know what it is to panic in the pitch-black and feel irrevocably lost. And I think that's what makes this awkward time of idea-fledging and humble re-learning so sweet: just being able to see again a shaft of light, and know that the Truth still reigns and that whatever I have been or failed to be, I am not alone.

on time

 

Have you ever watched The Dark Knight Rises? If you have, I’m sure you remember the near-unbearable suspense climax as our favorite heroes fight desperately to disable a time-sensitive nuclear bomb. One moment too late, and an entire city could be wiped out. It is a race against the tirelessly ticking clock.

I just pulled up the clock app on my phone and watched the second hand go by for a full minute. Quite literally, I saw an entire minute of my life disappear—lost forever. Irredeemable. And I thought how odd it is that we do not respond to life’s ticking clock the same way we respond to a Hollywood time bomb.

Think: our lives are forever ticking by. Seconds pass on a tireless rhythm, and with them pass hours and days and weeks. Time is like a gun to our backs, pushing us closer and closer to the End—an End which history tells us we must inevitably reach, be it by death or Rapture. No act of genius or heroism can stop the ultimate Clock.

So where is our urgency?

Why are we lounging in our lazyboy recliners instead of perched rigid on the edge of our seats?

The only difference between our lives and the peril of Gotham City is that we have absolutely no idea when it might all stop. Shouldn’t that sharpen our senses rather than dull them?

People say it all the time: “Oh, sorry, I’m just so busy right now. I don’t have time. Maybe later, okay?” It’s the ageless excuse to avoid things that are hard, things that are unpleasant, things that just don’t seem like a priority. I just don’t have time.

Liar.

Don’t you understand? If you are honest with yourself, time is all you have. The plot twist is that you have no idea how much. So spend it wisely.

For you yourselves know full well that the day of the Lord will come just like a thief in the night. While they are saying, “Peace and safety!” then destruction will come upon them suddenly like labor pains upon a woman with child, and they will not escape. But you, brethren, are not in darkness, that the day would overtake you like a thief; for you are all sons of light and sons of day. We are not of night nor of darkness; so then let us not sleep as others do, but let us be alert and sober.     - 1 Thessalonians 5:2-6

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I went home for the weekend, and it was a delight to absorb the sunshine and the wide open sky. I took Amy riding, threw a Jamberry party with Hannah, went to (most of) Amy’s tenth birthday party, helped Dad with the last heifer to calve, spent time with my horse, and looked in awe upon all the beautiful mountains that I don’t see often enough anymore.

Tonight, I went to home group and, very typically, sat in the corner without saying a thing while everyone else engaged in an interesting debate on the topic of prayer. I wanted so much to participate but found I didn’t have anything to say that had not already been said. I am not the kind of person who processes information verbally; I can’t speak up in a group unless I have carefully thought over what I’m going to say. So I am perpetually “the quiet one” and tend to be talked over, for the simple and understandable reason that no one expects me to speak in the first place.

I wanted so much to participate, but I find that regular conversations move too swiftly for my slow-churning mind. I am still deep in thought about the initial statement when everyone else has moved on into debate. My mind works quickly, filtering through the information and making relevant connections and throwing out what is worthless, but my tongue is unwilling; not until my brain reaches a place of rest and satisfaction with its conclusion is my mouth ready to share it. And by then the moment of relevancy has passed by.

I don’t really know why I’m writing all this, except that this is how I process things—in writing. If only our two hours on Monday nights had a pause button so that I could write an essay on our topic of discussion in time to share my actual thoughts... If only there would be some occasion in my life when I felt like I “fit in” with a group instead of always meandering in the outskirts, mulling things over behind the scenes of those with quicker minds and tongues. Honestly there are times when I’m sure I must seem like a brain-dead mute.

I told my sister the other day that sometimes, I feel like I have no place in the world. That I feel lost and wandering, ever searching for the actual, non-cheesy, non-Sunday school answer reason that I exist. Her reply, at least, made me smile: “Hey, you know, that’s the first attribute of a superhero.”

I guess that’s one way of looking at it. ;)

nisqually national wildlife refuge

 

These first October days have been sunny and sweet. Sam and I have been housebound by sickness all week, yet just seeing the sunshine filtering through the windows and the yellowing maple leaves in the backyard has been delightful. Today, finally well enough to go out, we took a leisurely stroll down the boardwalk at Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge, soaking up fall colors and a big sky and a rare view of Mt. Rainier.

And about the heron… I’ve been trying to capture a Great Blue Heron for years on camera. We get them in the swamp at home sometimes, but they’re very, very skittish and I’ve never been at the right place and right time. I saw this heron at a distance, but it was well beyond the public access part of the refuge and I don’t have a 600mm wildlife lens, so I moved on. Not even ten minutes later it just so happened to fly across the marsh and land like ten yards away! I was able to move in close enough to easily fill the frame just using my 135mm lens—not a very shy bird. :) Definitely a day of triumph on the camera front!

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It’s a bit like scraping the scab off an old wound—one that was just that close to being healed and forgotten, yet there’s the pain again and now it’s time to start the process over from the beginning. The hot summer wind blows grit into the sore and it stings with memories of the two summers past. One, a pang of heartache and the fear of leaving what is known behind; the other, a sharp stab of that terrifying truth that my venture into the unknown has changed my view of the known forever. I go back to a Goldendale July and I am no longer Mrs. Liening of Olympia. I’m the girl who watched Mt. Hood fade into the horizon on a United Airlines flight out of Portland, asking herself why she had willingly walked the plank into a sea of total strangers—the girl who later said goodbye to the truest friends she ever knew and found herself sitting alone on a familiar sundrenched porch, viewing the world through the blurred lens of lonely tears.

Sometimes I feel as though I’m in mourning, but I can’t express what it is that I lost. I only know that I’ll be moving through life at a steady clip, heart and hands too busy to hurt, when suddenly like a fist to the gut it will all hit me and I’ll find that I’m crushed under the weight of the last two years and I just can’t stop crying.

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I spent lazy hours in silent sunshine by the creek, watching a moment of my own childhood from a strange third-person point of view while Amy and Dad caught rainbow trout. The first cattle drive of the year crested the ridge on Hill Road, and I thought how in an alternate existence I might have been a cowgirl, following the plodding herds up to their summer range in the mountains on early Saturday mornings. I breathed the chilly west wind and felt orchard grass heads slapping my elbows, cold irrigation water spraying down my back. My horse tucked her head into my chest for one of her sweet hugs when I left, and I gave her white star a kiss.

the misty mountains

 

Far over the misty mountains cold
To dungeons deep and caverns old
We must away ere break of day,
To seek the pale, enchanted gold.

~ J.R.R. Tolkien

chasing mountains

 

January has the clearest days. Skies like satin draped over the world, whose ripples and wrinkles highlight in subtle coral and pink when the sun goes down. Winding roads through fields of thin green velvet lead to everywhere and yet nowhere, pointed deceptively toward shadowy blue peaks that are dimmed by a haze as sheer as a bridal veil. I followed them over the rolling hills for many silent miles, and I tried to imagine a God big enough to hold them in His hand.