On [a beach devoid of people under] A Cloudless Sky.

I had a mid-week day off last week, which hardly ever happens.

I sat down to write a blog, because I want to have something important to say, but nothing came. The "maybe I'll have something to say when's" tempted me, like when I have babies or when we move somewhere foreign or when our real lives start.

I remembered something Sarah Bessey wrote about writer's block recently, "that place where I’m feeling stuck and where I feel I have nothing to say – it’s usually because I have nothing that I’m living and nothing I’m experiencing and nothing I’m taking in. You can’t really write out of an empty well." I didn't have anything to say, so maybe I just needed to live.

I put on my shoes, and stopped feeling sorry for myself. I engaged in that sacred practice of lacing up sneakers.

I live in a postcard. I'm serious. People drive hundreds of miles to visit this painfully quaint little town that I have the privilege of living in. And while they don't see what I see: the drug problems, the poverty, and the lack of access to entertainment or educated people my own age, I see what they see. But I have to remember to look for it.

I got in our car and drove not 10 minutes up the road.

I put in my headphones and It is Well filled my ears, and I walked. I walked, due south, parallel to the waves on a beach devoid of people under a cloudless sky.

I noticed the subtle sinking of wet sand beneath each deliberate step. The roar of the ocean drowned everything out, but the words played crisp and clear and into my heart, where there is no escape from thoughts or beauty.

And then Spring Up, Oh Well, and for the first time that was a prophetic prayer. 

I remembered that I am a Beloved Child of God. The ocean is powerful and big, but God is oh, so much more powerful and bigger.

So, Spring Up, Oh Well for It is Well.

On [the edge of] Devil's Churn.

devil's churn, cape perpetua

There is thunder in the rocks. As the water violently churns, it quiets our churning hearts. All of the whens, whys, hows and the overwhelmingness of it all are tossed into the sea of forgetfulness.

We watch the tide come in and pray the worries go out. We wait, in the midst of such a powerful display of force, for there is hope for peace.

Fog rises up over the water and wets our skin with its cold embrace, curling up the rocks and billowing over the hills and leading us home.