I feel like I'm on vacation!

I watch a man, at home in rubber boots, plaid shirt, fleece vest and ball cap as he walks towards an old rusted mailbox.  The Canada Post logo stands out against the old forest green.  Rust, pours over the top and down the sides as though an anointment of age; a distinct marking of time and endurance. 

I’ve seen the newer, sleeker, grey and brown boxes around this quant, autumn town in Nova Scotia too.  I doubt that this box receives the flurry of communication it once did.  If a mailbox were personified, I wonder if it would feel tainted or replaced, or if it would bask in the light of the glorious good ol’ days.  Compartments are now filled with colour evidence of deeply planted capitalism, consumerism; greedy-senseless-needy-ism.  The romantic, elegant ebony curves of cursive, hand written stories poured out on a page of heart and life and history faded into rigid light rows, right to left lines of the typewriter, and then to the stark, Times New Roman, digital life.  And while to me, fingertips tapping on the black keys of my now aging Macbook, a typewritten letter seems deliciously retro, I wonder if there is less heart to paper flow, when words are split into individual characters, and each line is paused and pierced by sound and and forced motion back to the left.

I’ve realized lately that sometimes I don’t make connections.  For example, I just realized the beautiful play on words of “Whit’s End,” home of the incredible imagination station in the stories and radio life of Adventures in Odyssey.  I’m too used to trying to think faster, but in a way that causes me to break my words – thoughts, memories, emotions, lessons – into choppy letters and uniform words.  So life is processed in quick jerky movements as I watch words appear on the page, and try to transfer information as fast as possible. 

That’s why, caught up in the slowness of pressing richly coloured oil to paper, or as my paintbrush slowly straitens, vibrant pigments sailing from brain to brush to canvass, I’m in love.  I’m in love with the moment, at once cozy and invigorating, where my heart and my mind and my body are connected, the rigidness is gone and I just soak. Beauty. 

We spent the day watching incredibly beautiful icy blue waves of Peggy’s Cove roll majestically across endless water, then crashing mightily into massive rocks, slow, fluid movement suddenly leaping into the air, as millions of drops of salty cold sea flew into the sky.   I confess that last time I was on the East Coast, it was beautiful….but I didn’t find it stunning.  But yesterday, I could have sat on those rocks, small in the immenseness of creation, smiling and mesmerized by clouds and waves until my hair turned gray, and my face, thick with salt from the sea, was sweetened by wrinkles – the paint of love and joy and peace.

As I lay in bed, talking to Amber for long enough that I’m sure I’ll be ready for a twelve hour nap by four o clock this afternoon, the image of waves was woven through the thicket of thought and conversation.  Maybe my brain doesn’t connect the dots fast enough, but my heart is connected to my Saviour.  And what’s beautiful about the realization that I’m going in circles, creeping forward and then almost pushing myself back to the starting point, is that the story He’s writing in the process is the kind of story I want to tell with my words and clothes and eyes – endlessly.   I think I’m getting over being run by fear, and it creeps back.  I think I’m getting over pride and perfectionism, and it pours out of my eyes in tears that make my cheeks red and itchy.  And I realize, that all of these things that make my heart seem black and dark in the middle of the night, are small.  He is washing me, making me, teaching me, leading me, painting me, molding me; writing me.

And I just get to laugh, watch the waves, be amazed,

And be His.