A Camera-less Photograph

I wish I could take a picture. It's so beautiful I may cry.

But my camera battery is dead and even so its not just the image that I want to recall, it's the sound, the way it feels, all the senses. Cameras can't do that and memories come up patchy, but even a patchy memory is better than none at all.

So as I lie in the hammock in the middle of woods, with Katlyn in her hammock a foot and a half away,  I force myself to look deeper. Why is beautiful and why do I want to cry? What makes this moment more remarkable than any other?

It's the way the breeze blows softly over my face and slides smoothly under the hammock.

It's the way Katlyn pulls on my hand to try and get our hammocks swinging.

It's Mallory's burst of laughter from the tarps as Bailey asks another ridiculous question during their game of "Would you rather?".

It's the way the trees all come to point above my head, like all of the woods are bending down to cover us.

It's the near-blinding light of the moon pushing through the trees. God's all mighty night light casting brilliant shadows over the dips and rises of the forest floor.

It's the muscles in my stomach contracting as the laughter rolls up from the lungs and pushes my jaw far to open.

It's the feeling of lying open under the sky.

It's satisfaction.

It's freedom.

It's the feeling of grace, pulsing, pushing, pulling, yanking, tugging, and surrounding my heart, filling my eyes, swelling up from the bottom of toes to radiate from the top of my head. I shouldn't be allowed to abide in this. To have the privilege of being able to go outside, under the gray sky, and the silver/white clouds. To see clearly the ridges and movement of the earth that has not yet been allowed to rest in darkness.

Katlyn and I look up at the sky and consider the moon. The moon has no light of it's own, it is purely a reflection of the sun, so in that respect, the sun never leaves. The same rays that warm an Indonesian beach are reflecting down through the trees of the North Georgia mountains.

The moon and stars are instruments of Grace, that even in the dark, the woods, in the places that we fear, God has not hidden His light. There it is, reflecting the sun on the other side of the world. There they are, huge gaseous forms that are light years away.  How could this ever be bad? Even when the scorpions surround you and the cold sweeps in, we still rest in a well-lit pocket of grace.

It's so beautiful I may cry.

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