RL4B: Relentlessly Looking For Beauty

My dishes have been piling up for days! It's a chore both my husband and I dread, and it's become like a game of chicken as we wait each other out until one of us breaks the stalemate, usually when we run out of forks! Today, though, I chose to take a new view on doing dishes. I mentally listed all the things that are beautiful about it during the task. We only have two people in the house using dishes regularly, yet we have 18 ceramic plates of varying sizes, 50+ durable utensils, 12 soup or salad bowls, and over 25 glasses. Abundance is beautiful. We live in a house that has a dedicated space with a double sink and counter space to stack dirty dishes. Having a kitchen under a roof is beautiful. All of the plates, bowls, cutting boards and knives that need to be washed means that we had food that was prepared and made into meals. And when the dishes pile up quickly, that just goes to show that whenever we were hungry, we got to eat. Having plenty of food at your fi...

Last Sunday, I had a serious case of the blah's. I had slept okay, but my energy level was on the floor and I was out of breath with the tiniest movements. I was lugging around extra weight from PMS fluid retention, made worse by my enlarged heart failing to keep pace with its pumping efficiency. I wanted to stay in bed. But I didn't. I put my complaints to the side and went to church, knowing from past experience that I never regret making the effort to attend once I'm there. However, once the service let out, I was keen to get home and eat my lunch in front of the television. And I was secretly hoping that my husband would abandon his plans of going for a ride in the mountains, so I could put on my sweats and lose myself on the couch. But he didn't. Instead, he loaded up our UTV (side-by-side) and asked if I was ready to go. At that moment I had a choice to make: I could beg off, citing my frumpy feelings and let him do one of my favorite things without me, OR...

I have loved swings for as long as I can remember. Anytime I was on the playground at school or visiting a park, I would run to the swingset to claim a seat. Jungle gyms fascinated me, but I could never muster the courage to climb higher than the second rung, not trusting my balance, and hanging upside down was out of the question for fear of falling on my face. Slides were okay but required a lot of effort in overcoming my fear of heights since climbing the ladder to the top took me a long time with my methodical, frequent stops to ensure my footing before moving to the next step. I liked to ride a merry-go-round, but pushing it required coordination or friends, two things I couldn’t always count on. But there was something about the smooth motion of a swing with the breeze on my face as I flew higher that gave me a sense of freedom, independence, and control along with a peaceful contentment. As an adult I have found a similar, though flatter, feeling on swivel cha...

Two weeks ago, I traveled back in time. My husband and I were looking for ways to celebrate our 20th anniversary when I came upon a unique opportunity - a dinner train across North Central Montana. Model trains were one of Shawn's childhood hobbies, and I've always been fascinated by the immense, steel machines, so we decided to purchase tickets. The loading station is almost four hours from home, so we packed an overnight bag and and planned our route through the vast plains that lie east of the Rockies. Arriving in town early, we had time to visit the local museum to learn about the people, trades, and origins of this Central Montana town. It was here that I began to sense the history beneath my feet. One exhibit displayed the common luggage of a late nineteenth-century woman boarding a train. Her trunk was an array of smaller drawers filled with jewelery along with a larger compartment for clothing. The mannequin was dressed stylishly in a feathe...