It's like when sour milk spoils, the bitter becoming sweet.

At the pirate fair my grandparents used to take me to, there was a roller coaster for kids.  The train was shaped like a dragon, head to tail.  I can't really remember my first time on it.  I think my memories of it aren't really my own.  They are formed form an older pair of eyes, seeing younger children in excited terror letting go of mom and dad, stepping into the dragon's head, gripping tight and staring at their parents.

And I'd like to imagine that little girl, hair knotted and tied carelessly into a pony tail, and that boy with a crooked, artistic DIY haircut as a younger Jen and Tim, and we look back at mom and dad, or grandma and grandpa in black and white striped shirts, and the bar clicks as it is locked down on us, and the ride jerks as the dragon flies up.

Sometimes days have ridiculous highs and lows. And sometimes it's hard to keep seeing the incredibly bright blue sky and the unbelievably bright, perfect shimmering snow throughout the day.  It's like that moment on the swing, when you're at the top and you can see that little bit of the neighbourhood that you just can't see from the ground, but you have to keep pumping hard and fast for those moments where you see it.   Up and down and up and down I was swinging through my morning trying to get everything I needed to brave the beautiful biting cold on the way to church.  I was swinging through church and I was swinging through cooking brunch and I was swinging through my conversations and then I came home, and jumped off the swing, and landed in those wood chips that are beautiful sienna brown, and smell delicious, but give awful slivers that sting and are stuck in your hands for so, so long.

And something slithers over the hugs and smiles and stories and warmth of singing praise to my Saviour.  And these bricks are unbearable, tumbling down and building all these walls that seem unbreakable.  And it's like they've made this fence that fights back authenticity and fosters this fake, hushed, ugly, heart wrenching, fearsome...thing...that masks the most loving faces, and just, hurts.

I want to fight the extreme with the extreme.  I step into the snow on the balcony, bare feet, bare arms, and I just want to have tears to freeze to my face.  Or I would just like to run outside and scream 

because I see the hearts around me and I know the faith around me and it seems like everywhere I go these walls are coming up and I really just am craving an authenticity in which we all just cut the crap and be the broken  faulty creations that we are and in which we allow our strengths to be strengths and we acknowledge our weakness as weakness and we cry out for help when we need it and we're humble enough to be genuine in gratitude and we shed the thick skin we've created to hide a shame which we should have shaken and we just be who we really are. 

 Completely. 

And please can I just know your heart?

I was dreading our community prayer time tonight.  I was dreading this room of people praying surrounded by this unspoken unseen thing that I was feeling.  I wouldn't even say I was doubting - I was full out believing that tonight was going to be fruitless, that it was going to be so surface level that any change would be environmental - the sun warms the top foot of water, it ripples, the wind makes little waves, a fish jumps and sinks back down.

The dragon, with a smiling face and happy green and yellow body rolls gently up and gently down around an oval track.  And slowly the two little kids in the front let their grip disappear and they giggle as they raise their arms up and wiggle their fingers and feel them being moved by the air as they glide around the track.

Prayer tonight was beautiful.  It was authentic, pure, community in communion with God.  There were moments tonight that I've been praying for and dreaming of for months.  And joy was heavy in the room. And I could feel God in the room, like the child feeling the air through her fingers. The room was ...full... and the air was sweet to breathe and no number of words in any language can even begin to describe it.   My sorrow was turned into joy, and once again I was surprised by God working so POWERFULLY.

I'm lying in bed, eating a piece of incredibly dark chocolate.  I used to hate the bitterness.  I actually would have squirmed and scrunched my face up and spat it out not too long ago.  I smile as I savour it.  I love how live changes day to day.   I love how God works in such unexpected, undeserved, and unimaginable ways.

I knelt on the hard floor, my hair falling in my face, my whole body smiling and basking in the warmth and saturated with immense joy.  The God who holds the universe, dwelling in my living room.

The air is always there.  It's always life sustaining.  It's always moving.
Sometimes, you can touch and taste and smell and see and hear it.

Can you hear the sound?

This morning, coat buttoned up, hat damp on my head, cheeks burning slightly, I came in the door, smiling.  Do you have something to tell me? Asks Carla.

No.

But I love the snowy-icy-pellety things that are falling from the sky.  They make this magical beautiful sparkling tingling sound.  And the ground is so bright.  And the sound is so beautiful.  And I almost wish that my rational self was not telling me that standing outside in this weather is not a good plan.

But the sound...I actually can't get past it.  It's like thousands of little tiny oddly shaped bells ringing , or itsy-bitsy glass bubbles shattering.  It's like walking through a fantasy land, and really I just want to lie flat on the ground and press my face as close to the sound as possible, and listen to it dancing in my ears. It's like an incredibly delicate, curious song that I can only hear a little piece of, and I smile, in love with the piece I can hear and in complete wonder as I try to imagine what it would be like to hear it all.

I love the sensory phenomena of creation around me. In BC a week ago, smelling the pouring rain and touching towering trees, hundreds of years old, their bark softened by the water but rough and strong, protecting and providing like callused hands.  The river rushing behind me, rain drops being caught in the gentle forest floor, I stopped in awe of  tiny moss florets, each having caught droplets of water, light shining on them in just the right way so that it looked like the ground was sprinkled with amber crystals.
So big, and yet so, so immaculately detailed.

And that leads me to time.  To plans that I can't possibly understand.  To reflecting and rejoicing and pondering and pleading and imagining and inspiring and wishing and waiting and, pause...

It's 2012.

And not that I have any major New Year's Resolutions...only to grow and shine and discover and teach and love.  I'm hungry for challenge - for challenge that shapes me day by day, and brings me more and more into the light of my saviour.