Morning Muse

The morning started off fast and early again, but now it is slow and wonderful here from my seat at a window bar in a sleepy, overcast beach town. There's a guy passing the window in a vintage yellow moped, and I want one. I ordered oatmeal with berries and steamed milk, and my third cup of coffee for the day. Coffee is my frenemy.

I stuffed the driver side of my car door with my computer, Bible, and several journals this morning; I hardly had time to strap on my sandals before heading out. These are the good days, and I know it full well. I miss the days gone by already, and I know I will miss these, too. There won't ever be another summer like this one, so I'm soaking it all in.

My skin soaked in too much sun yesterday.

I listened to some love songs in the car after I dropped kids off at the beach for Jr. Guards, then I sat listening some more when I'd stopped driving. Tell me a love story that knows hardship and sorrow, and you've got my attention. I've come to embrace the fact that struggle and pain are inescapable, and that perseverance in the face of these is essential to the assurance of a deeper love. Relational struggle with forgiveness, forbearance, and continued commitment and recommitment to tenderness, affection, and friendship... these add character, sincerity, and proof to love.

Through the hardships of life and relationship, I want to grow stronger in my resolve to hold dear, and softer to the human condition. This broken world, this broken girl, these broken loved ones... we are pieces held together. We have to keep choosing to love still more and cling still harder. It's a never ending choice, day by day, failing and choosing again.

I didn’t expect relationships to be so trying. I thought that if we followed the rules, we’d get the rewards.

But the rule of this world is that love will cost. It will cost dearly sometimes, perhaps even longtimes. (Thank you for allowing me to make up words.) It will require me to suffer, to give up personal comfort and ease, personal preference, to walk blindly by faith and hope. It will ask me to learn to understand what I don’t yet know, to say what I prefer to ignore, to do what is inconvenient or even grueling.

Love calls me to desire the joy of another over my own.

Consider the perfect love of God. Though he gave up EVERYTHING for us, we still find that on this side of heaven there is a struggle in our relationship with God. We know his unwavering commitment toward his beloved children, we know his unfailing promises and immutable character, but we still at times cry out in honesty, “Lord, where are you?”

But he is very much here, teaching and guiding. More often than not, it is through the adversity.

>:<

We were in the desert last week, where I practically melted beneath the afternoon heat to capture a girl in a frame.

~Katherine