Whoa.

Ok, so I posted that last one and hoped someone would send me some photos to post for an easy update to the blog. Why? Because I need easy right now. We are moving. Halfway across country. We're leaving the Washington D.C. area and heading to the Cincinnati, OH, area. There are many reasons and we've prayed about this move since the beginning of the year. We had very specific prayers that received very specific answers.

All of that isn't to say that we're happy to leave behind the life we've built here. We're leaving a lot of very good friends, a great school, and some of Rusty's family. I've been alternating between relief that the job offer came and we're moving and then bouts of sniffling because I hate the idea of saying goodbye to Ashley and Deedie and Sherri and Betsy... which is funny in a way because I haven't seen Betsy and Sherri in a long long time. And yet when I do see them, it's like no time was lost in between visits. Betsy is also one of my favorite email friends, so I won't be "losing" her altogether.

Anyway, we are trying to get our house on the market this week (anyone want to buy a rancher with a brand new kitchen? And great paint colors? And a tiny little workroom to call your very own? Yeah? Then email me.) I will be busy for the next two days until we meet with the realtor. I don't want to post something just for the sake of posting it and then miss the mark because my brain was too full of "to do" list items to really see and write what it is that God is trying to get across through Madeleine L'Engle in this book. This blog has become too important to me as a place to think out loud on this stuff. I don't want to give it any less than it deserves.

So. Does that mean there will be no posting until we move? No way! There will most likely be less study from the book, though. But that doesn't mean the discussion and thinking about art and God has to stop. I've been particularly struck by the beauty in my every day life lately. The view from our back window, the beautifully tall trees here in Maryland, the colors at Great American Ballpark in Cincinnati, the ability to lose oneself in something as trivial as baseball and the belief that your rally-cap did, indeed, win the game for the Reds. I'm finding myself with more and more of these kinds of photos:

I have tons of photos sitting on my hard drive waiting to be printed and hung. And to a lot of people they're probably photos of nothing (with the exception of the first one of Liam at Ocean City. But someone did point out, "You can't see his face." My response? "The picture wasn't of his face. It was a picture of how much he loves the beach.")
So why did I post these? A few people have emailed me and said they're thrilled that someone considered them artistic enough to read this blog but they sounded slightly apologetic in their emails. As if you're not artistic enough somehow. I posted these pictures as a way of saying sometimes you don't even have to create to be an artist. As long as you recognize the beauty around you every day, you are, in a way, an artist. A lot of people go through life upset about the rainstorm instead of staring in amazement at the beauty of the clouds and the smell of wet concrete. I didn't create any of the things in these photos. But to me, they were glimpses of beauty in themselves or by what they represent to me.