One day I'm going to be one of those old ladies with an old weathered face with stories at my fingertips; stories of great tragedy and stories of great triumph.  My greatest hope is that I have stories of beauty to tell.

Maybe the stories can be simple- about people I've met who've inspired me.

Maybe they can be stories of what God has stretched me to do and I've wildly submitted to while shaking in my boots.

Maybe the stories will be the very best with lights out and flashlights and images of martyrs and their shields of faith in far of lands with the bible stretched open before my fingertips and a smile of delight on my face- knowing I've fought the good fight and still believe in the treasures of this book.

If I'm so lucky as this, I am lucky indeed. 
I can't decide the future.  I can only decide how to live now.

My life is full of questions as I embark into the unknown of the future.

As I reflect on this week, I am reminded of how struggle can creep up out of no where.  It can be in the simple things.  Wind chill.  Asthma attacks.  Deep longings.  A breaking heart for the broken.  Sometimes bad weeks just come.

And I'm reminded of the future; the future that is far past the here and now and stretches beyond my understanding of time into eternity.

"For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.  So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal." 2 Cor. 4:17-18

I live and love not for now but for the eternity I do not fully see. 

Past the weathered old face and the wrinkles that are bound to come there is a greater future to look forwards to and somehow this allows me to look at the present differently.

There is a sense that the things that I experience here in the tremors of my body- in the weak nature of who I am will not carry on for the entirety of the future.  There is a way that I can hold them with a openness and freedom.  There is a light way.

Momentary.

Somehow this allows bad weeks, months, and even years to be momentary.

So for every sunset and sunrise I lean into and get to see, I am able to look further and past this.  There is a sense that I enjoy all that is to come in this very time.  I get to praise the Lord in the moment and praise the Lord that this moment will, too, pass.

I often get tangled up in wild, abandoned living.  Let's face it.  There are wonderful and great things here in the sunrises.  There are a few things I gladly embrace and enjoy in life.  I'm real and I feel the realness in my bones and yet there is a sense that I am always an idealist and embrace moments deeply.

I'm prone to wander and prone to longing for profound adventures.  

I can readily understand the verses of the grand old hymn:

Prone to wonder, Lord I feel it.  Prone to leave the God I love.  Take my heart Lord, take and seal it.  Seal it for Thy courts above.- Robert Robinson

It is with every reminder, that He draws my heart back to him and refreshes me to see that I do not live for the now, but always for the greater and ever growing Kingdrom, the courts, eternity.

Sometimes this news meets me with freshness, that I can carry my load so much lighter in light or eternity.

At other times, this news meets with with a sense of yearning to understand the fullness of eternity.

Still at other times, I am with the Robert Robinson calling my heart back to live in light of eternity.

Fix your eyes above, my friends.

With hope,

Flowers in my hair this Week:  I am so privileged to have access to the word of God to silence the lies of my ever running brain.  The world is dark, but the word of God is truth and pierces the lies.