(December 2011)
Life rotates so fasts, it leaves my head spinning. Last time I lived at home, my sweet little brother looked like this^. Now he’s capable of taking Lexy and I both out. Luckily, he’s still one of kindest-hearted people I know, and doesn’t pummel us :).
(December 2016, Bronco Playoff game)
I took an ice-skating class one semester at A&M as a required kinesiology credit, and when we learned to spin, they taught us to choose a point of focus. On every rotation, look for that point again and again and again. Maybe there is something to that, I thought. Even if you go a few spins without finding your point of focus, stay on your feet with searching eyes. For me, that point of focus has to do with faith. Every trying circumstance puts fear into our hearts of falling, failing, and potential being down for the count. But, it also ignites a fire in our searching hearts and eyes to stay up. Stay up. Stay up. Even as the earth rotates on it’s axis, it maintains its point of focus on the North Star (don’t get technical on me, I know it is slowly changing). This point of focus causes seasons, which could be an additional analogy :). Analogies are my favorite avenue of communication.
(August 2016, San Juan Mts.)
Just around the next “turn” could be a mountaintop lake at 12,000ft. Last August, while backpacking in the San Juan Mountains, we woke up at 4 AM for “peak day.” After peaking at nearly 14, 000 ft. around 8 in the morning, it felt like a marathon to turn around and seek out this lake. To be frank, I didn’t want to gain that kind of altitude again. Sometimes we all just need a push to find the kind of beauty we long to partake in on this side of heaven. A push to jump in the lake ;). Or someone else to do it first, hah. Usually God provides one of those, “I’ll go first,” people for me. —> Dearest Lexy, that is you.
(December 2016, Alexa picked up this chameleon without thinking twice, lol)
This kind of beauty looks a million different ways to me. To name a sparse few: it is phone conversations with dear friends, the smell of stargazer lilies, good books, all the catch up session walks we’ve counted as workouts, talking about everything and nothing really, the gift of working closely with families I love, rocking babies in my favorite canyon’s summer air, seeing and being a part of outsiders welcomed in, floating the river, praying together, cliff jumping, dancing, guitar music around a fire in the fall, homemade brownies and ice cream, shooting guns with dad, Blayzey’s football games, doing something I love as a career, consistency, and seeing people grow. Beauty is one of those transcendent things that connects our hearts to the eternity which lies in wait as believers in Christ.
Very very very few days are “peak days,” but there is so much life to be found in the valley. Geographically speaking, there are often rivers running through valleys. The places most beautiful places I know are also some of the most challenging to reach. It’s all part of the analogy, so let’s keep pushing each other; let the oxygen gained on this turn ignite a fire in our wanderlust hearts… aliens and strangers, yet neighbors, friends, and family.
(August 2017, Devil’s River)
paigesykes 