a midnight ramble

It's been a long week. Only Thursday, you say? well.

Since moving forward together in life, time has seemed both speedy and slow in the same breath.

    'It's already August...four months left?!' we gape at each other. And yet...it's only just over nine months since this all 'began'.
(quotes are necessary when we attempt to put a timeline upon happenings in a world made by a sovereign God. It's late. and I'm theologically picky. eh.)

Each day has been filled with thoughts and plans and conversations and prayers and action and inaction with words we should have said and moments we should have been still...Papa has truly blessed us with His wise strength, as He's using us for each others healing and sanctification. I'm so thankful He gives such joy regardless--and including--circumstance. Each step He's allowed us to take in this life has brought us here, for which my heart is full.

Such is the fallen world, though, that now more than ever before we are made aware of our blatant humanity as we attempt this leaving and cleaving business that sometimes resembles more of a meat cleaver attacking a steak than the beauty of two lives melding (no offense against said steak: being with Travis has encouraged me to delve into the formerly unknown realm of red meat). I have learned more about grace than I ever thought I needed to this year (back to relational and away from the meat). I have learned the ugliness of sin, the discipline of forgiveness and the superfluous nature of the words 'I', and 'mine'. We are still learning such things. We will keep doing so Lord a'willing.

    The metaphor of God as our refiner in the Bible has been a ready source of illustration when explaining the growth of one who has been called to follow Christ; I hadn't reckoned on quite so much heat. We have our scars, our hurts, our triggers from years ago that burn the heads of those around us now. How much more do those rear their ugly heads when one is moving towards marriage and facing an unflatteringly accurate human mirror? Praise Abba that He has been drawing out our wounds, healing them as a poison must be drawn out, or as a drug must be weaned off of in the hope that the wrenching pain and withdrawal will give way, one moment in a timing not our own, to peace.

Speaking of peace...bed. sleep. Yet my heart was overflowing with thankfulness and affection for the One who created me, and for the one who has been a gift from the former. How wonderful and sobering, knowing I am to live out holiness with another flawed being. Now to take that mentality and apply it to the rest of the world. Goodnight, moon. Goodnight, God who made the moon.

Not a bad thing, having a long week.