I had a hard week.  So we packed up the car, threw things into bags and bought ice for the cooler and we took off with an idea of where we wanted to end, but just an idea.  We drove North, towards Canada and bigger mountains, listening to music without talking.  I had been crying over unexpected things.  I had been dreaming about monsters.

We slept on the ground to the sound of the river and the train whistling through the night.  He went fishing in the morning and I laid there looking at the orange canvas and listening to the angry hornet trapped between the rain fly and the tent and I was happy to listen to his anger.  I laid there all morning still deep in the sleeping bag even as the temperatures rose and the air smelled of sunscreen from the campsite over and the bees came out.  I laid there until husband stood over me hot and sweaty and I realized I was sticky, flushing, finally warm.

We broke down the tent.  We packed the car.  We ate chicken salad sandwiches at the picnic table and we left.  We drove through the valley through the wheat fields through Boundary County and we stopped at the mountains.

Earlier that month we heard a Colorado man preach that God's presence is strong on mountaintops in the old stories and those words had not left me.  I thought if I could just be in the mountains.  If I could just get out of here and go there.  If we could climb and breath hard and burn our legs out and if we could talk about what it is that is happening to us and find His direction to fly towards then maybe I would be able to stop hovering and I would finally sink into being here and maybe here would fit.  Maybe it would grab me and I would feel like this was a place to stay.

I told husband that I am tired of fighting a losing battle with these kids and these families and this mad system we've made for them.  I am tired of the losing.  I am not sure I can bear to lose another thing.  I want to win, want to put down roots, stop the drifting and I am here waiting waiting waiting.  For the next thing.  For a step.  For something to happen.

I  think I must be ungrateful, I know I am.  I am growing too big; I am enormously human right now.  I've been awful to Him lately, I've been angry and unimpressed by grace.  And there's an ache in here that won't leave when I think of what I was with Him-- all wild fire, passion and hunger.

Husband took me to a high mountain lake and I sat on a large rock while he fished.  I listened to the wind sweeping across the lake, across my body.  Searching greedy around trees, whipping up the water, tossing the dust, moving clothes.  I sat listening for the missing words in the howling, restless, mountain space.

What am I trying to say?

That I am here, pushing against a God who loves enough to wrestle with His people.  I am shaking the quiet off.  I am angry with myself for the dulling, the slowing, the staleness.  I am twenty-four years walking with a God and I have just begun to know Him and I am wishing I had walked a little better but I am not done.  I am tipping and it is alright.  I am losing and it is okay.  I am becoming smaller and I am relieved.