to new eyes

I walked to my 8am this morning in a state of frenzy. My thoughts were rushed with: a paper, a physics midterm I desperetly need to do well on, a discussion ahead of me that I don't feel awake enough to get through, boots that are really slippery and I shouldn't have worn for risk of falling, people I need to remember to get back to, lunch dates I want to set up, halloween costume to create, house cleaning I need to do.....AH.

and then I looked past the roof of Bryan Hall and I gasped. When did those rolling mountains creep up into the distant landscape back there? How do I miss it every morning I walk that way? It was beautiful. I had to stop for a second to get the view- the light that was misty and soft, the way the moist air seemed to mute the colors of the trees far off, the spotlight of position and sun that hugged in this scene. I was swept away by it, carried far away from my frenzy and my slippery boots and from the people walking past who so often stress me out too. I was in a moment, and it was a good one.

Here was a wake-up call from the Creator, a screaming, loving acclamation of "HEY I am good and I am here and I am BIGGER than all of this and YES, you need me." Here was something beautiful, as if for me alone, that made everything in my day seem trival. I ached for it.

It hit me then that I was made to be swept away by THAT. Daily, I allow myself to be taken by stress and busyness, and I wonder why it makes me feel like I'm suffocating, makes me feel like I'm walking around in a stranger's house, makes my own reflection blurry and ugly. It is because I was not created for that life. I was created to have JOY simply because the world is beautiful and because I was made as a part of that and because God is good ALWAYS - even in that paper and midterm and house cleaning. He is good. Always.

I don't want to be broken by chaos and busyness. I want to be broken by God's glory and His love. I want to feel empty without it, desperate to glimpse it, ill if I miss it. I want to rest in that place, in the mountains past Bryan Hall. I don't think rest exists elsewhere.
so here it is to new eyes - ones that are open to finding the things we were meant to be swept away by.