Secretive

I feel like everyone should have a place where they can go...a really quiet, still spot when things don't make sense.

I've had this place for a while...since high school. Ashley and I found it on a run one day. The thing is, a lot of people actually go to this spot but for some reason I like to think it's all mine.

(It's like when I was a little girl and my parents took me to Rotary Park. I guess I was in that stage when everything was mine, and I used to ask to go to "my park." My parents called it my park all the time after that.)

This place is really special to me. There is a stream, an offshoot from Shelley Lake, off the paved path and into the woods. It's not really secluded, but it's hidden enough that I feel protected there.

I don't think that God is in the trees or the water or the rocks, but I think they "cry out" of His wonder and beauty. His creation tells of His greatness and I sometimes need that place to remind me that He is bigger than all of this.

I've come to a humbling place this weekend and it needed to happen. I've let a lot of relationships almost run into the ground and I've lied to myself and believed that as a Christian I have freedoms, when really I used it as a license to sin.

Today, there was a man riding his bike along this path. There was a woman standing on rocks in the middle of the stream, playing with her dog. There was a couple, sitting on slabs of stone amid the water, huddled together, eyes closed, heads down. I guess a lot of people need this place, too.

And this stream is always flowing. And running along it reminds me of the Living Water, that eternal spring that is promised to us. And I know that the Lord is merciful and loving and wants us to delight in Him and in His creation, especially in people.

I am never cured after going to that place. But it is the only thing I know to do when there is too much clutter, too much sin, too much ugliness in me and I need a serenity that only comes from stillness before the Lord my God.

The husband has been sick since last night. We think he has some mild food poisoning. (Please pray.)

We have had some serious discussions and made some exciting/challenging decisions. I like being a "we."

We have the Lord. We have Him first because if there is one thing I know, it’s that our relationship can’t survive without Him. And we have a partnership together. And we may not have it all together and we may have a long way to go but Jesus has it all together and Jesus went all that way for us and that is the most comforting thing I could know, and I just realized it right this very second.