So many days have passed since I returned from heaven on earth (New Zealand) that it seems pretty silly to try and wrap it up. Let’s just say I’ve been back long enough to miss it. The people: so kind to each other. Cordiality is the norm; manners are genteel, and it rubs off, let me tell you. Paul and I spent two weeks in the car with each other, and being nice is no small task when you’re driving on the left side for the first time around some crazy hairpin curves on mountaintops. With the ocean down, down, down on your left side and only a few wooden posts separating you from sheer death if the driver errs. . . And yet, when in New Zealand, you do as New Zealanders do: “Love, would you mind keeping more to the middle. That’s a dear. Thanks. . .”
I loved it there. The kids look you in the eye when they speak, and sometimes they speak to you first. The scenery is amazing, and we kept yelling out at sheep grazing, “You are the luckiest sheep in the world! Grass so green and views like this!!!” The ones in the middle of the road we stopped just in time not to hit spent a full three seconds staring at our grill, then a horrified look took them over and they ran to the roadside, suprisingly quick on their feet. Pillows running. I wanted to kiss them all. The people and the sheep.
I love New Zealand. And I will live there someday. When the time is right, we’re packing our art and blankets (the only things that really matter and make home HOME), and we’re going home. But that won’t be for a while, I suspect. God plans the time and places we all live, and ours is here for now, this we know.
Yet here in Kansas City it was spring, and the vibrant green and clover fields won my heart like they do every year, and I believe this is one of the most wonderful places in the world to live, too. What can I say, I love my life! Paul and I rave about how good God is to us all the time, and it is true. To look at the good things–whatever is good, noble, right, pure, lovely, whatever can be admired–distinguishes a life, I’m finding. Right now I’m reading Anne Rice’s Christ our Lord book-number-two called The Road to Cana for the second time (the first time I read it during eight hours of roller-coaster-ride turbulence on the plane ride over the Pacific). Jesus the Sinless turned from criticism and judgment when people acted ugly by immediately focusing on the good thing He could cling onto. I want to be like that so bad!
I want to deal with people and problems creatively–this is from Hannah Hurnard’s book The Winged Life–a thought-life-changing book that I’m also rereading. . . There’s lots of that going on right now. I’m working with God to get back to a point I veered from a few years ago. That’s one thing I love about God: if you miss an on-ramp He set up for you, there’s always another one somewhere down the road. Hopefully your mistakes have hurt bad enough that you’re desperate to make this on-ramp no matter what. I’m there right now: starving for more and sick enough that I may have missed the things He had for me then that I’m ready and willing to do the hard thing in order to grab them for dear life now. Jesus–I’m ready! Please take me to the high places! (This is from Hannah Hurnard’s classic Hind’s Feet on High Places. Read it.)
If it means a stick in the heart and dying to myself a million times, it’s worth it. I don’t care how sheer the drop is to the ocean on the left. See, I know there’s more to life, and I’m killing myself slowly if I don’t do the hard things to know it now.
Do any of you know what I’m talking about? Do you know there’s a great thing around the corner if you’d just get up a half hour early and work out, or save the Starbucks cash for the new couch, or serve at the homeless shelter like you’ve been wanting to do for years, or finally said no to yourself for a while?
Well I’m back in the saddle again. . ./ Ridin’ the range once more/ Totin’ my old .44
Where you sleep out every night/ And the only law is right
Back in the saddle again
happy trails
