Spring Days

We've had some good days lately, some fun days. Days where I've seen the girls show grace and love and not just irritability, territorialism, and argumentativeness. Honestly, do any of those three girlies look like they could exhibit any of those negative things? I can only speak for two of them that those two on the viewers' right certainly can! We've had some good days, though, and they are to be treasured and used as fuel for the days that are more full of, ahem, teaching.



These precious days have shown the love between these two sister-best-friends.

We've been able to take time to breathe, relax, and play together. Don't they both look a little bit like starving dinosaurs ready to pounce on their prey? We had a picnic that day after the girls came running in begging for one. Sadly, my immediate reaction was "no", but when they asked for the reasons why....and I couldn't come up with any.....out we went into the beautiful, bugless, only-moderately-windy, spring day! Too often I look for the reasons why to not do something; these days remind me to look for the ways I can say "yes" to them - to life - to living.

These days where a sweet someone brings me flowers are so numbered, so precious, so fleeting. I wear dandelions in my hair most afternoons, and I can't imagine any hairstyle I'd rather sport.

These beautiful days with my sweet girls (and their friends, who for the purposes of this post all happen to be children of my own childhood friends!!) leave me feeling like a wiggly, overly-excited puppy thankful for the love he is receiving! *Note: It may appear that he is lifting his leg. He was really in the middle of a jump of joy. Really, he was. He lifted several other times soon after this picture, but that picture is Joyful Hubert.

It's like reaching out toward perfection, and just about getting there, stretching with everything you have, balancing the rest of life in the back of your mind while you reach, stretch, and nearly touch it.

Just before it prepares to fly away yet again leaving you with a gorgeous, warm memory of being so near to a right world.

Of course, we can't quite reach that right world from here. We can't reach it ourselves, and we can't reach it in this lifetime.

But....we can catch glimpses of it from time to time. Glimpses of the days where we do what we should (more than on other days), where we react with patience, kindness, gentleness, love, where our family and friends respond in like manners.....

Where the sky looks to be hand-painted blue, the possibly-ordinary-moth-but-the-girls-are-sure-it's-a-butterfly is a most gorgeous little creature, where the chokecherry trees smell so strong you can taste them....

Those days leave us feeling like this. Reaching Heavenward. Giddy. Reflecting the light.
(She's trying to trick that butterfly/moth into landing on her finger.)

And somehow these days, or these few hours or minutes at a time, they give us the light we need to trek on through the dark valleys. While I've been loving on butterflies (moths?), small blonde girls, and flowering trees, others I love have been in black holes of pain and difficulty. This post comes from my processing of two weeks of intense wishing that I could hop right into those black holes with them because I know what it is to be the one in the dark while the rest of the world can still see the butterflies and have moments where they forget about pain.  There have been few times these past few weeks, even as I photographed these many sweet moments, where my thoughts have not been turned toward that particular black hole.   Rather than an evasion or escape from those thoughts, my hope is that I've presented these pictures in a way that shows my thankfulness for God giving us these glimpses of all that is lovely even in the midst of the dark world in which we live.
Thanks be to God that in the midst of our dark, the light, the one light and hope of Christ, will always shine through.