Extravagance

I blatantly stole this picture from Kristen Brooks. I'm not sorry.

 This weekend while I was processing so many deep thoughts (here and here), I was also being beautifully reminded of all the amazing, crazy-glorious ways that God has filled my life since we moved here. Saturday night we burst at the seams with people in every room, food covering the kitchen surfaces and children spilling out the doors, down the stone steps and into the water.  We spent hours doing what it seems friends and family do best: eating, talking, sharing, laughing, hugging someone else's kids as they run by, tripping over each other's words to get to the funny part.  The weather was succulent and even the sunset showed off for us.  We went back for seconds, and so-help-me thirds.  We relived our most hysterical and punchy moments from the mission field, trying to make spouses who weren't there understand why these things were so funny, but in the end I'm certain they all chalked it up to high altitude and oxygen deprivation.  Even more wonderful we again enjoyed sharing some of our lake life in Georgia with some of our ocean-side friends from Florida.  It isn't often that the two parts of my life meld together so sweetly, but when they do it's like the most perfect harmony ever sung floating high against a cathedral ceiling.

Sunday we opened our home for the year end blowout of our life group.  Having chosen to eat healthfully together all year, this was our time to shine with the most gluttonous food options imaginable.  I'm uncertain that I have ever had three helpings of dessert before, but I did this day. It was amazing.  I'm always enchanted by the experience of five very distinctly different couples and thirteen children ranging from sixteen years to one coming together so joyfully. We have never once broken up a fight or quarrel, with the children or the adults.  Somehow the love of Christ and the exuberance of youth manage to overcome discomfort, differing opinions, and skinned knees. We've revealed our ugliness and uncovered our scars together for the better part of year, and rather than being repulsed or shocked, we've embraced, enjoyed, identified and wept together.

It was almost too much goodness packed in so closely in time for me to fully grasp the depth and breadth of the joy that was pressed into those too few hours.  In the days and weeks to come when ministry gets heavy again and stress makes my eyeballs pound and squeeze, when I see my husband only before dawn and long after darkness falls, I'm going to dive into the memories of these days and this love-filled life and take a refreshing swim in their goodness.  Who could dare ask for such an extravagance in their lives? But you can be certain that I will wear its goodness like a warm cloak, a beautiful coat of many colors, given to the favorite child.