Ice I will miss

Samm and I have been hosting Phin, his brother, for roughly three weeks. My sister Helen and her friend/Luke's girlfriend and my sister Jodi also stayed with us intermittenly over the holidays, and it all finally ended today at the airport.

It's been good, wild, chaotic, full of intense talks, uncomfortable up-closeness (hearing how you talk to your husband through his brother's ears and realizing you aren't as nice as you thought - oh and there was the time we thought he wasn't there and our bedroom door was open...), flowing beer and whiskey, vanishing coffee/food from my kitchen, a new kitten we all fell in love with, hard questions about everything, hard realizations, new jokes... I feel Phin and I are friends now. Three weeks ago we were strangers. I feel closer to Helen than I have since moving here to PA. I feel happy to death to just be home and back to normal again. I am a little stunned at the stillness.

The last few days Samm, Phin and I drove to Gettysburg and New York. The battlefields were breathtaking, haunting. I don't make any sacrifices for this country - so to try to imagine making that ultimate one, and so many young men making it... it was overwhelming. New York was so big, so full of little people everywhere... it was also overwhelming. We dropped Phin off at the airport in DC and took the scenic road less traveled by home through the mountains.

During the night icy rain had covered the rolling woods with a thick gray glaze. The trees seemed painfully old and stiff, bent over with the cold weight and set against the cloudy dark sky. As we drove higher and higher into the slopes of western Maryland we turned a corner and collided with a piece of blue sky. Beams of heaven shot through into the icy forest around us in a way I can only describe as a magical. It made me feel so homesick, so delighted to be there, at that moment, and so full of longing. Now I remember why I go on roadtrips! It was dreadful to whizz past, to descend again into the small towns below with their Walmarts and KFCs and cheap motels.

Most of life is in those towns I guess, trying to stay off Facebook, to wake up early enough to pray, to remember that this world and my life will be made new - reborn in a flash which I hope will resemble the sun hitting those trees today.