night sounds swell into beauty.

I've started to pack, and mostly I'm just ready to be at our new home...

But tonight there are a million frogs singing outside in the fields, and it's been so deliciously windy - I'm feeling a bit sad about leaving. Not necessarily to specifically be leaving this house and our life here, but more sad to leave the lifestyle that this home represents. It's not a fitting lifestyle for where we are in our life - trying to get a business started and figuring out how to sustain the necessities of life - but it's certainly fitting for where we want to be. This is where I want to be someday, when I'm not quite so young and over-zealous for busyness... Someday we hope to live life slowly; to enjoy the quietness of the world's beauty; to hear and smell the earth moving and breathing around us... but perhaps it isn't the time for these things. Perhaps it is only time to appreciate the idea of them, and to take that idea and apply it to life in every setting (yes, even in a city).

I read an article in National Geographic about wild Mustangs, and how they are being taken captive to make room for more land-grabbing. They say you can adopt one for $125 if you first take care of it humanely for one year. It made me remember some of my deeply-buried dreams. I've always been an animal lover, to be sure, but horses have always been different. Since my earliest days, I've fallen in love with every horse I've ever seen... true, since the accident, I've felt a little less Romantic about my land-lady's horses, but the general love has returned in full force... It is not the time in my life for these dreams, but I still hold them very dear and pray that someday they will be part of my life.

Returning to school is another pursuit of a dream - to be a director. I've started reading all these "classic" plays lately, and I have to admit they are often disappointing to my ideas and ideals of what theatre should be. I wish I could just walk into a theatre and say, "teach me everything you know, because I want to take what you know and use it differently than it's ever been used before." But I need an education, or at least a little training, to even get in the door. I'm excited about possibly doing this, but part of me feels like maybe it's just another way to busy myself...

Which brings me to my main point - what should we pursue in this life? It seems obvious to me that God gave each of us gifts, ideas and passions... but are we to pursue them because we love them, or because He may have called us to offer them to the world as a herald of His Love? And what if my passions don't seem to directly be "ministry"? What if I long to glorify Him by creating art (through theatre), or by wooing His beautiful animal creations into peace with and trust of mankind once again? Weren't we called to care for and rule over this earth and all of its creatures? And didn't David glorify God through his poetry, even though it was from his own thoughts and through his own lips?

Is it odd that I've always had almost an equal passion for loving animals and humans in nearly the same ways? I've always had a strange affection for the damaged/abused/neglected animals who simply need to learn to trust and receive tenderness unto healing... and I've always had a deep and brokenhearted care for the aching/wounded/desolate human hearts that yearn to be pursued with an honestly unconditional love... Of course bringing souls into an eternal relationship with Christ is the utmost purpose of my life, but these things have followed me along the way. It seems my love of animals has often led me into situations and conversations with people that directly focus on God's love for us, and His desire to teach us to trust Him... I've always felt like, if we can somehow reach past the brokenness between animal and human (because all of us are God's creatures, created for His delight and glory), that we could experience a depth of God's heart otherwise undiscovered.

I'm not, in any way, trying to say that animals are equal in value to humans... they do not have eternal spirits (as far as I know from His Word), and must therefore serve a purpose altogether different from our own... what I'm trying to say is that they still bear the mark of our mutual Creator, and I think they can thus teach us about His character, and His desire for a loving relationship of trust and vulnerability. If I can learn not to fear, but to gently and patiently pursue a broken-spirited and abused animal to the point of a trusting and loving relationship... have I not just witnessed how God pursues us? He is patient and gentle and honest - He teaches us to trust Him by re-teaching our minds and bodies to respond in a way other than fear. Though we may be brokenhearted and emotionally scarred from the affects of other people, He teaches us to trust HIM with every raw part of ourselves. He is the ultimate caretaker... and were we not charged to be the same caretakers to all of His other creations on this earth?

It is a difficult and precious task to put our hands to... tending to the plants of the fields, the birds of the air and the animals of the land... how often do we let ourselves look, with utmost adoration and tenderness, towards this earth we were told to be caretakers of? Does He not look upon us with these feelings? Perhaps He asked us to care for them because He knew it would be difficult, and because He knew that it would remind us of His everlasting, uncompromising, unfathomable and constant love and care for us...

Oh I'm going on and on and on... mostly I was just thinking about this abused horse that I worked with for months when I lived in South Carolina, and how he learned to trust me... and I was crying about it in bed, so I guess thought I should get up and write about it.

But I suppose that's rather foolish, isn't it?

Someday. Maybe.