I’m not sure how to write all that is swirling around in my heart. It’s been so hard to contain what’s going on inside of me, to define and explain it. All I can say is that I continue to find myself over and over again becoming so overwhelmed with the thankfulness I feel about where I am. The journey God has taken me on is so amazing and the way he has orchestrated even the small details of the lessons I’m learning, the changes in me, just delights me in ways unexplainable.

I think about my life now compared to years 18-28 and I am struck with the contrast. It was like I lived those ten years asleep, not enjoying this incredible gift of LIFE. I can’t explain just how ALIVE I feel now, how awake I am compared to then, like sleeping beauty finally kissed by her true love. It’s like life sprang new in me and it’s bubbling out, uncontainable, onto the floor, into the cracks, dripping into the basement, filling up every room to the ceiling, pouring out the windows into the street. I feel like everywhere I go it pours out of me in ways I can’t help… it just bubbles and flows out, on and on. I feel like I’m about to burst with the LIFE flowing in me and it just amazes me.

I think that in losing my marriage, and in that, getting torn down to the very core of myself, God has slowly whispered to me about who I am and who I’m not. It’s so freeing to embrace yourself, your true self. It’s so amazing to throw away the untruths you’ve believed about yourself, pulling the millstone of all of those lies from your neck and tossing them into the depths of the sea. It’s so freeing to just LIVE in who you are, not apologizing for your self but embracing it. I am starting to see that all the tools that I need to accomplish the jobs set before me are hidden in my true identity. And that identity is so GOOD and so special.

Yesterday, independence day, I kept thinking about my own personal independence. This gift I’ve been given has not been lost on me. I was saved from the depths of fear and loss and abandonment and disgrace…from heart-wrenching pain that went on and on and on. I am just SO, SO, SO saved. It is so good. Life is so good. I’m just reveling in the freedom. And this is just the beginning…

Scones the kids and I made Carrie for her birthday

Article in the local paper about the Good Samaritan Clinic finding a new home

My friend Amy made this amazing teepee for her daughter’s birthday out of fabric we sell at Tangle.

Gasp, Honor’s room, clean!

excited for this to come to Main Street

Carrie trying out her new birthday present.

Fruit Snacks must be enjoyed in Rainbow-color-order.

beergaritas…mmm…

Basically all the pictures of me are ones I take of myself.

At our local Farmers Market on Main Street you can get these amazing roasted green chile wraps… oh, so good.

One of the things that I think is easy for “Christians” to do is to expect certain things out of God. We’re told that God will make our lives so much better… that following him is a cure-all for everything that ails us and that if we don’t get what we want out of him, we are somehow at fault… not holy enough, not full of enough faith. This is definitely the way that I grew up believing. And to a point, yes, it’s true… God does make everything better. But he also has a grand master plan that we can’t always understand, especially when we’re living right through the middle of it and sometimes that plan involves a lot of suffering and questioning and pain. It’s kind of like child birth. There’s a WHOLE lot of suffering involved, but in the end, that pain was the only thing that could get us to the happy ending. I think God sees the long view when we are stuck right in the middle of our stories, in the doldrums of life. He sees what the outcome will be, he sees what a tool pain is in our lives and that’s why I think he doesn’t mind if we suffer a little.

The one, and maybe only, thing I know about God is that he is good. Only good. All the time. Whenever I find myself riding the wave of uncertainty (almost always), wondering where he’s taking me, I remind myself over and over again that he is only good. And also that he knows better than me, that he’s looking at the whole picture when I can only see a tiny corner of it. When my marriage was falling apart, I fully expected God to fix it because in my mind that was the only thing that could be good. And since my marriage being fixed was good + God is good, that should equal me getting my way. Gosh how thankful I am that I didn’t get my way. (Don’t count on me saying THAT sentence very often.)

I’m starting to get tiny glimpses of the long view, the big picture and I just can’t get over how thankful I am that I had to endure some pain to get to where I’m going. Stuck right in the middle, I couldn’t see how much better things could be if only I’d let go of my stubborn determination to have things the way I thought they should be. Now I just think of God as this really patient and totally brilliant father who says, “Yeah, sure we could go that way, but the story is going to be SO much better if we go this way. It might be hard, but going my way will change the entire outcome for the rest of your life and it will be SO worth it.”

Um, it is.

And all this time I had been stamping my foot, demanding my own way when his was so much better. I kind of think that God doesn’t like to be told what to do. I think that when we set up all these expectations for how we want him to move, he just has to blow our minds a little by doing it totally different. (Hello, theme of my life.) I think it’s his sense of humor and adventure. I love that about him. It’s like he, himself, is a little irreverent.

What I’m coming to believe is that I don’t want to know how my story is going to turn out anyway. I want to be surprised by the outcome. Every surprise so far has been SO good and SO fun and SO remarkable. I don’t want to read the end of the book before I finish the middle. I’m finding myself getting so content to ride the boat, not knowing where it’s going but that the adventure is going to be epic, that I’m going to be surprised over and over again, and that in the long run it is going to be SO good because the guy I finally let drive is SO good.

Giving up control over my life has been hard and it’s a lesson I have to remind myself of daily. But it’s been worth it… every single time it’s been worth it. And it will be worth it tomorrow and the next day and the next. THAT is something I know.

Late last night we got home from an amazing rafting/camping trip. Knowing this trip was coming up definitely helped me get through all the hard work I was doing on the clinic last week. Carrie, Seth, Caleb, Brian and I set out Tuesday after work, with the raft in tow and camped at Rifle Gap enjoying Beergaritas and Campers Stew (both are A-MA-ZING!). We got up earlyish in the morning, had percolator coffee and oatmeal, packed up and headed out. After stocking up on more Beergarita ingredients and cold fried chicken, we hit the river. We put in in Glenwood Canyon which is my most favorite part of all of Colorado. If you haven’t driven on I-70 through the canyon, it’s definitely worth it. Riding the train through is even more amazing and, of course, floating down the river is the very best.

We had an epic day navigating rapids, eating and drinking delicious things, with me tripping on the rocks which left my legs all bruised and scraped up (par for the course) and swimming in the hippie dips (a section in the river where the hot springs drains into little pools – I could live there forever.) It was such a perfect day spent with people I love… kind of a last hurrah for our little group before Seth and Carrie move to Ft. Collins.

Things are a-changin around here but I’m living in my new way, soaking up all of life there is, cherishing every moment because who knows what tomorrow will look like. As I sat on the raft yesterday, laughing as people cracked jokes and teasing Caleb about his country music, I just drank it all in, sealing the day into my memory and enjoying it as much as I could. It’s amazing how much more of life I live these days.

camping at rifle gap

Caleb’s amazing raft

The boys fished at the end of the trip.

I’m always amazed at how tranquil and healing it is to be on the river. I so get why people spend their entire summers on the river.

Love this pic

catching a brown trout

at the hippie dips

making huge bagel sammiches at the end of the float (I was head chef.)

(read Carrie’s version of the story here.)

(as always, these pics are taken with my iPhone 4s.)

Amy is an interior designer and she was working out of Tangle the other day. (so fun)

The first day of Summer Break we had a little family meeting and talked about what it means to live in a family – how we treat each other, the responsibilities to living in a family, etc. And we all signed a contract to that effect.

I liked this little guy.

On the patio at Pablos. (love Main Street evenings in the summer.)

Eden kept her room “mommy clean” for 30 days so after writing a 3 page research paper on Garter Snakes, Lightning came to live with us.

You know, just a regular Sunday afternoon on the back patio…

Western Colorado wheat fields

Seth did such a great job!

The Good Samaritan Clinic started almost a year ago out of a dream – we wondered, what would happen if we could provide medical care to the people in our community who couldn’t afford it but desperately needed it. If you don’t know what the Good Samaritan Clinic is, it’s a medical clinic, supported by our community, staffed by volunteer physicians and medical professionals from our valley, and run solely on donations. We don’t ask our patients to qualify financially to be seen at our clinic and we also do not require them to pay.

I started volunteering because I was interested in homeless relations in our valley and I knew the clinic would impact that population. I started out helping where I could and I kind of fell into the role I now find myself in, Operations Administrator. I kind of think that’s how things work with God, he just gradually plugs you into a position that best suits your skills and suddenly you find yourself doing something you’ve never imagined for yourself but it’s perfect. I have never worked harder in my life but I just LOVE what I’m doing for the clinic.

Our clinic started out as a mobile clinic. We would work out of various locations in the valley and as the word spread, our monthly clinics got bigger and bigger. A month or so ago we leased a permanent space for the clinic and began working on getting it ready to be a clinic. On Monday the construction and painting wasn’t finished yet and the building was empty and by Thursday we were totally set up and had our open house.

My friend Brian and I practically camped out in the space this week cleaning, moving furniture, organizing supplies and hanging pictures. Last night, after our open house, we sat in the beautiful space and marveled at the feat we had pulled off… we opened an entire medical clinic in just a few days. I’m so proud of this huge thing we’ve accomplished.

I’m excited for what’s next. We get so many phone calls every day from people who need help but can’t afford it. I’m excited to be able to tell them, yes, this is where we are located and yes, we can help you. I’m amazed that a church that’s only a couple of years old can pull off a project SO big and help so many people, not for the purpose of converting them but for the simple purpose of just HELPING where the need is.

For me running the clinic has been part of those blind steps forward that I’ve learned to take. It’s been part of me laying my life in God’s hands, totally surrendering, and saying, wherever you’re taking me is where I’m going. I never expected this to be where he took me, but it’s perfect for who I am. I’m so grateful that I get to do what I was made to do. It’s pretty amazing.

Last Tuesday my friend Seth asked that I help direct a commercial he was shooting for a local clothing shop, Pollux, that my friend Ivy owns. I was more than happy to help out and had such a fun time hanging out in a beautiful alfalfa field at the base of Mt. Garfield. Ivy did such a good job styling the shoot and her cute, “Mobile Pollux” was perfect for the shoot. I can’t wait to see the finished commercial!

Before

After

A couple of weeks ago Tangle got to install our knitted art display, Knit on the Corner, at the Art and Jazz Festival. This was our third year! This is one of my most favorite projects we do and I love that knitting gets recognized as art. We installed over 100 pieces on Friday and took them all down on Sunday. I love that our city gets the whimsey and fun of guerrilla knitting.

(tangle in the background)