I see Your face in every sunrise
The colors of the morning are inside Your eyes
The world awakens in the light of the day
I look up to the sky and say
You’re beautiful

I see Your power in the moonlit night
Where planets are in motion and galaxies are bright
We are amazed in the light of the stars
It’s all proclaiming who You are
You’re beautiful, You’re beautiful

I see you there hanging on a tree
You bled and then you died and then you rose again for me
Now you are sitting on Your heavenly throne
Soon we will be coming home
You’re beautiful, you’re beautiful

When we arrive at eternity’s shore
Where death is just a memory and tears are no more
We’ll enter in as the wedding bells ring
Your bride will come together and we’ll sing
You’re beautiful, You’re beautiful, You’re beautiful
–Phil Wickham

June 21: Arizona
Happy Father’s Day! Montezuma and picnics


June 22: Arizona–New Mexico
Petrified forest, pink and blue highways, and Albuquerque

June 23: New Mexico–Texas
Carlsbad Caverns, Pecos, and the very first Rodeo in the US of A

June 24: Texas. it’s enough.
Sara, Steers, and long lost friends


June 25: Texas–Oklahoma
Memorials, mom’s futuristic past college, and singing every song from the musical.

June 26: Oklahoma–Missouri–Illinois–Indy
I finally mastered the waffle maker at the hotel. and then it was time to go home.

July 16: Colorado
the Great continental divide, dude ranches, and Taco Bell for dinner

July 17: Colorado–Arizona
Painted desert, Pueblos, and blow pops=happiness


(the top)
June 18: Arizona: Grand Canyon
The bottom, the squirrels, and the stars

June 19: Arizona: Grand Canyon
Sunrise, soreness, and Sedona: Donovan, Uncle Loren, and Aunt Carol


June 20: Arizona: Sedona
Family reunion and lotsa good food

June 11: Indy-Peoria-Iowa
Windmills, black squirrels, and polka

June 12: Iowa-South Dakota
Pink highways and good fellowship: Micah, Becky, Elijah, Jaden, and Zion


June 13: South Dakota
Badlands, Rushmore, and buffalo

June 14: South Dakota, Wyoming, Colorado
Got chased by birds, lonely cowboys, and mountains

June 15: Colorado
Amazing cousins, picnics, and 2 miles up

“I jumped into one of those volkswagen camping vans and shoved off for the green lumpy places. a week into our American tour, we found ourselves at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, which is more lumpy than green, it turns out. By the time i got to the bottom of that gargantuan hole in the ground, i was miserable. it was beautiful, but when your head is throbbing, you don’t want to sit and reflect on how beautiful things are. lumpy or not.
The Canyon is more spectacular from the rim than from the river. Once in it, everything looks like Utah. Beneath the billion stars and beside the river, i called to God softly. “Hello? I am sorry God. I’m sorry i got so confused about you, got so fake. I hope it’s not too late anymore. i don’t really know who i am, who you are, or what faith looks like. But if you want to talk, i’m here now.”
It felt like i was apologizing to an old friend, someone with whom there had been a sort of bitterness, and the friend was saying it was okay, that he didn’t think anything of it.
There is something beautiful about the Grand Canyon at night. there is something beautiful about a billion stars held steady by a God who knows what He is doing.”   –Donald Miller

so we followed the footsteps of the great Don Miller, but i made it down without bloody feet or blisters. and i don’t think it looks like Utah. I haven’t been in Utah yet. Personally, i wasn’t impressed by the top view. it is so big i just dismissed the whole thing. But you can’t dismiss something you trek down, one foot in front of the other. something about red dirt really makes me happy. And i climbed an oak tree because i think better in a tree and i listened to David Crowder say:

And the problem is this
We were bought with a kiss
But the cheek still turned
Even when it wasn’t hit

And I don’t know
What to do with a love like that
And I don’t know
How to be a love like that…

and then we hiked 5 more miles because somehow we got the wrong campground–the one halfway up. and thank God we did or i dunno because uphill 10 miles is a lot at one shot…and i was asleep even before the sky turned dark, listening to Carina read “The Restaurant at the End of the Universe” but at midnight i woke up, cold. i only had a blanket and a trashbag and it wasn’t enough. The girls were sleeping and everything else was sleeping and i crawled next to Anna and looked at the sky and…

“There is something beautiful about the Grand Canyon at night. there is something beautiful about a billion stars held steady by a God who knows what He is doing.”

“Life is a dance toward God, i begin to think. And the dance is not so graceful as we might want. While we glide and swing our practiced sway, God crowds our feet, bumps our toes, and scuffs our shoes. So we learn to dance with the One who made us. And it is a difficult dance to learn, because its steps are foreign. And i think to myself, There is nothing i am missing. I have everything i was supposed to have to experience the magnitude of this story, to dance with God.”

“A canyon is, after all, an upside-down mountain.” –Don Miller

So my family made the customary trip into the next hotel room with the Aldi’s bags. The West (with a capital W) doesn’t seem to have many Aldis. How much they miss. our bags need replacing.

this hotel lobby’s computer is Ubuntu. David would be happy. David, did you know it is 8.04? or is that an old version? David would know. I found out that Ubuntu is an African word, a beautiful word that means something like you with me…connectedness. ironic, in a hotel lobby.

i sit in the car looking out the window looking for adjectives.
If i can just find them, then i can quick, write them down, i can have everything under control again. i can have it explained. for example:

Iowa adjectives: fullofblacksquirrels (yes, that is a one word adjective), Indianaish, polka-y, green, and open.

South Dakota adjectives: flat, lumpy, dizzifying (the badlands), striped (or is it stripped? i can never remember that one. parallel lines), president-y (Mt.Rushmore), fullofbuffalo (not to be confused with bison, which Anna said were extinct and that lead to a nice back-seat argument), cleansmelling, and Wild West-y.

Wyoming adjectives: lonely, wideopenspaces, and hey, we only stopped there for lunch.

Colorado adjectives: sweetmountainbackdrop, snowy, carsicky, friendly, purple and yellow wildflowery, dude ranch-y, great green giant-y, and pueblo-y. and how could that stupid beetle kill all those beautiful trees?

Arizona adjectives: redredred meets blueblueblue, dessert (or is it desert? Not the one you eat), white and green rocks to red and more red rocks, Grand Canyon…the one i know personally, estrogen (4 girls, 17 miles), green glassy Colorado river, attack stalkerish squirrels, satisfaction, rest, and full of family stories.

New Mexico adjectives: dry, petrified, funny little hills, and lots of pink and light blue (they paint everything pink and light blue here).

Texas and Oklahoma are still to come.
and so i sit here in the hotel lobby, listening to people check in and check out and then steal some orange juice from the breakfast bar (i love free breakfasts!), and i place all my adjectives in the right places.

what am i trying to do?
do i really want everything in a nice pile? do i really want it all organized so someone will ask something and i can come up with a good response of what i think that place is like?

my adjectives are not all-powerful. or complete. in fact, they are silly little words i try to stuff my short lived experiences into.

maybe because it is all i know how to do.
and i want more, but i am scared of it. the wanting.
i want experiences so big that i can’t fit them into adjectives. i am wondering if you have the “writers” and you have the “live-ers.” and the writers put on paper all the things they dream of or see the live-ers doing.
i want both. i want it all (bwaahhaahaaa–evil laugh in the background).

*and here i should insert note…
this trip has been great. perfect. the people. the places. the ground moving outside my car window…

perhaps…it is when you have the great things in life that something wakes up in you and realizes it is hungry. it growls because it knows it wants more. the holy longing, the sacred discontent.

and that cannot be satisfied in nice piles. or in a controllable fashion. it is more of a calling for reckless abandon.

in two weeks from today, right about now my plane will be taking off for Atlanta. or Miami. or whatever stop i am making before i get to Brasil.
two weeks always scares me.

just enough time to screw everything up, but not enough time to get everything done.

This place fills me

Some days fill me to OVERFLOWING

And i can’t control it

I can’t handle it

I gush out all over the place

I burst

And it is WONDERFUL

Oh those sad days…

That pass without awknowledgement

The empty days

You need to find places that fill you

They are everywhere

And it doesn’t have to be the Grand Canyon

Wherever you are can be beautiful

If you can see it

You need to find people who fill you

Who encourage you

Around whom you like yourself better

When they are there

And NONE of these things work

Or last very long

Until

He fills you

Yeah. Him. God.

Friend. Father. Creator. Lover.

And then everywhere is beautiful

And everywhere fills you

And then everyone is beautiful

And has a story to tell and listen to

And life is full

This place fills me

Because You are here.

It started when i was staying at my grandparents’ farm when i was 18. Or maybe it was earlier.

I started walking down the railroad tracks and kept walking. West. And then the sun started to set and i knew i had to turn back–but i didn’t want to.

it hurt. something in me ached so badly i felt like i was killing it when i turned around and walked back. I felt so limited. My body could only run so far before it was out of breath. And i couldn’t fly. That was always a sore spot with me.

Since then it has gotten worse.

some roads call me, taunting “you don’t know what is at the end of me” and i want to follow them. Sometimes i do. it seems that every sunrise calls me East to follow the new day. Every sunset i am called West, trying to catch the colors more brilliantly–maybe if i were just a bit closer..Whenever it is cold i am called South and whenever it is warm i want to move around until i feel the wind in my hair…

Sometimes

i forget it all. i refuse to listen to the journey. i close my eyes to the East and the West. and i forget that i want to fly.

But not today. and not tomorrow…we are going to New Mexico.

I have been having more dreams lately.

it must be because i am not sleeping at home or something. i forget my dreams when i am at home.

That kind of dream where you wake up with a hole in the back of your throat. And you don’t want to open your eyes because not just the dream will fade–the emotions will fade and you just want to hold on to it because it is deep and real and who cares if it is just a dream…it meant something to you.

in one dream, i was with some others and we had to save this guy who was located across town. And as we drove, people came streaming against us, so we got out of the car and started yelling “Hey! Listen! we have something important to say!” but no one would listen. And i felt the pressure–we had to go and we knew the people were going the wrong way–to the bad people. They were like zombies, stuck in their way and they had forgotten how to think. So we spread out our hands to stop them and yelled “Stop! Listen! We have a story! You must hear us!” and some people slipped through our fingers and continued on, but others turned around and joined us and we became many, all with a story to tell.

Then last night was another one…i was this cat/fairy warrior woman (heh), fighting with these “Others” who wanted to capture me. And i got away from one after another, and the next one came and i kicked him down the stairs but he just kept coming back up. and i was wondering in my head how many more times this would happen when a shadow darkened the wall and i knew someone else was coming too…and it was the man’s three kids. and i started weeping. i wept until i woke up crying. Because i couldn’t kick him down again. i knew i had to go with the man. because he was real and he had kids and he loved and lost and hurt and laughed and…vulnerability. i couldn’t fight against vulnerability. no matter how much cat/fairy warrior i was.

I bet you’ve had some good dreams yourself. and i wonder what they mean.

It doesn’t seem right somehow.
to be able to change environments and life and situations so quickly.
my body hasn’t caught up yet.

We drove through Iowa. ok. Iowa wasn’t that thrilling. but it was nice. And it was an excuse for Anna and i to sing all the songs from “The Music Man.” And finding a park with a polka band…and then dancing something that might have been polka-ish was fun.

Then South Dakota. There is just so much happening outside my window. i can’t keep up with it. flat plains. then green lumpy spaces. then you turn and fall into the BAD lands. Then rocky-ness. Then lots of flags and patriotism and looking up George Washington’s nose at Mt.Rushmore. Then the Wild West. capitalized.

i would gaze out the window and try to wrap my brain around what i was seeing.
but i couldn’t manage. not before everything was changing and different and i had to start all over again.

Wyoming seems lonely, yet inviting. open, open, open. the idea of OWNING land just seems silly. at least when you are on a road in the middle of ALL of it staring back at you.

John began the trip by counting all the McDonald’s that we passed. by South Dakota, we started stopping at WHATEVER was available, because McDonald’s had disappeared. Along with everything else man made.

And then Colorado. Mountains. How can you wrap your head around mountains like these? two miles above sea level, shivering in the snow (because i didn’t bring pants), and feeling overwhelmed. lost. afraid. because there is so much world, and you can only love so many things without being splintered into a million pieces.

I think what i like most about traveling is seeing how other people live. seeing how many other ways–besides mine–that there are to live. and sometimes you smile. sometimes you frown–quietly. sometimes you are awed by brilliance, and sometimes you just wish you could shake the bloomin’ daylights outta them to make them DO SOMETHING.