Over the weekend, Brent and I took a rest.

We loaded up the kids and took them to meet their Grandma and Grandpa. Then we gave them smooches and waved good-bye and got back in the van and had so much fun together—just the two of us.

We ate good food that we didn’t have to cook and laughed a good deal at each other. In all the daily grind of things, I had forgotten how ridiculously funny Brent can be. Because when he comes home from work, it’s supper time and I can hardly hear him tell me about his day (or vice versa) over all the chaos. Like trying to get Hopey to stay in her chair and eat her food while Gideon explains the difference between steam engines and power trains and Samuel protests loudly that he’s through with his meat and taters and really needs his sippie cup.

And I have to admit, in all the pandemonium I forget that Brent is my best-friend and team-mate and I start treating him more like some sort of house-wreck relief assistant. I wonder why he isn’t immediately folding that heap of laundry or putting all the dishes away or when is he going to mow the lawn and complete the other umpteen things on my mental check-list. And all these things I expect, of course, without actually communicating any of them. Yeah, I know. That’s not very nice of me.

So, we took a break and got away and slept in way too long and enjoyed each others company and let each other just be.

Saturday morning after breakfast, we sat out on this deck by the river and spent time with God together. It was so good for our souls, this being still.

Brent read to himself mainly and I read a little too, but for the most part, I just felt the wind blowing and watched the river quietly rush by and observed all the little living things around me. I had forgotten how much nature speaks to me about God.

I surveyed this little black ant on the rail in front of us that scurried along, sometimes darting this way and then that. He looked a little frantic as he foraged and I wondered what he was in such a rush about, pausing only to clean his antennae.

God told us, once, to go look at the ants, (Proverbs 6:6-8) so I sat still and observed him as he worked diligently, out there on his own, without anyone standing over him telling him what to do. Ants are such unselfishness things. They work tirelessly for the good of their colony. Their only concern seems to be to carry on the next generation.

Then I noticed a granddaddy long-leg ambling slowly along, all eight long legs of his twitching, as if he were blind and had to carefully feel his way through the world. He stumbled upon the ant and it startled him so he darted to the other side of the rail.

Seconds later, I spied a little grey jumping spider, who must have sensed the ant’s movements above her and stealthily sneaked out of the crack in the ledge. She sat motionless and waited as the ant hastened by, just above her den.

Two hawks soared above the tree line, and then swooped effortlessly, carried on the wind. And below, just above the water’s surface, scissor-tail swallows flitted, scooping lace-tail flies up as they went along.

I marveled that there could be so many wildly living things in this space right in front of me. How God filled the world chock-full of life, so marvelously diverse above and beneath me.

I thought about what Clyde Kilby had said,

At least once every day I shall look steadily up at the sky and remember that I, a consciousness with a conscience, am on a planet traveling in space with wonderfully mysterious things above and about me.

I looked down at my page and read these words:

Praise the Lord, for the Lord is good;
Sing praises to His name, for it is pleasant.

For I know that the Lord is great,
And our Lord is above all gods.
Whatever the Lord pleases He does,
In heaven and in earth,
In the seas and in all deep places.

(Psalm 135: 3; verses 5-6)

Later, Brent and I packed up and headed to the farm to pick up our kiddos.

A new week began and we step into it–back into the grind and the crazy chaos. But, my heart is a little more centered and my spirit’s been restored.

Because there’s this God who gives us rest. Who blesses us with life to enjoy and moments when we can throw our heads back and laugh. In the middle of the noise, I praise the One who made the ants and the spiders. The hawks and the scissor-tail swallows. The Creator of all the wildly mysterious things above and about me–He is good and He is here.

His Name endures forever. (Psalm 135:13)