Imagine you’re driving with your best friends down some back country road somewhere towards an unknown destination, but that doesn’t matter. The windows are rolled down and the weather has just changed; its cold outside, but its just beginning to turn cold. Just a couple of days ago, it was warm, but now the roads are becoming icy and you feel both the anticipation of the warm cups of coffee, and the sweaters you will get to wear, and the late night conversations that are surely to come when you and your friends are sitting so close together in an attempt to salvage your frozen limbs that your breaths become one, and then your laughter decides to follow. Imagine your excitement as you remember the holidays that are coming one right after another. The memories of carving pumpkins and stuffing your stomach full of food in years past create in you some kind of nostalgic peace and you almost want to cry, but in the best way. For hours, you and your friends have been listening to music of all different genres and dancing along to the beat of them, but the entire time you have had the feeling in your chest that you get during the buildup to your favorite part of a song. You and your friends know all of the words and you know the joy and laughter that will accompany your voices when you finally get to belt it out.
You look out of your window, and see mountains. These mountains seemingly go on forever. They have no end. The road you’re driving down sits along the edge of a mountain. The idea of you tipping over the edge crosses your mind but only as a passing thought. You grab the hand of your friend anyway because you know the comfort that their fingers entwined in yours will bring. The mountains closest to you are different shades of green and brown and the road that you have already traveled across curves in and out of the never ending hills. Farther in the distance, the mountaintops slowly fade to white and smoky clouds bounce across their peaks. As you continue down the winding road, you approach a part of the road that looks exactly like a roller coaster that drops off just up ahead of you. Your stomach drops, but only for a moment before you reach the tipping point that you feared just seconds before. As you cross over the edge and downward drop begins, everything goes white. The ground is covered in a perfectly untouched blanket of white, the rocks on either side of you would have gone undiscovered had their edges been less pointed and their color softer in comparison to the snow. You pull over, of course, because you have only seen snow like this once before. You step onto the powder and sink down to your ankles in ice as your hair slowly turns to white, snowflake by snowflake, in an attempt to match the ground you’re standing on. You take a deep breath in and try to accept what you’re seeing as your lungs fill with the cold, dry air. Your toes go numb and you take that as your cue to hop back into the car and keep driving towards this big question mark that your friends have been telling you about.
At some point, you would think that the mountains would fade back into the flat ground that you have known your entire life. The cold air would turn back into the heat you had become such good friends with just days before. You think the unending state of awe you have been feeling for the past couple of hours will come to an end, but our God is kinder than that. He continues to give small gifts scattered throughout the rest of the ride. He perfectly placed houses sitting on cliff edges, overlooking everything, and throws in rivers and waterfalls all along the way. You are giddy with excitement, hitting your friend’s leg and pointing out the window towards something new that you’ve discovered in five minute intervals until you finally pull into the grass of your home for the next month. When the sun is shining, the view from your new home is a mountain, not too far in the distance, dipped in ice and placed back onto the ground. Between you and the mountain is a perfectly sized town; not too big, not too small. Every time you step out of the front door, it is almost like God has allowed you to forget what the view looked like, just so you can be completely surprised by it all over again. You and your friends share a meal together before you share a discussion about your struggles and your passions. You talk for over an hour over cups of coffee and tea, bundled up in sweaters and blankets, trying your hardest to keep your body warm. The conversation lasts just long enough for the sky to fade to black and for you to walk outside to another gift from your Creator. Stars light up the sky and they too go on forever. You are hardly able to take in all of the beauty placed in front of you before the cold hits your lungs again and you’re forced back in doors. Your friends are waiting for you in your bed under a pile of blankets. You climb between them and you laugh together until your stomach hurts. You never knew you could laugh long enough and hard enough to put yourself to sleep in the middle of a chuckle, but you do.
You are me and this day was yesterday. I want to call it the perfect day but I am going to save that, because I am almost certain that The Father has bigger more mind boggling days ahead of me. The words written here cannot do yesterday justice. I have seen beauty that isn’t good enough for words. The things I saw yesterday were hand molded by the Creator of the Universe and every detail was so thought out and perfectly made that trying to describe the beauty to you in words on this page knowing that I could never make you understand just how incredible the things I have seen are is honestly tragic. Yesterday I felt so small in comparison to my surroundings but was at the same time incredibly overwhelmed with the knowledge that I am more loved than those mountains that go on forever. I am seen as more beautiful by the God that created everything this world has to offer than the snow on the mountain tops and I have been asked to shine brighter than the stars that light up the sky at night. I am a blade of grass hidden somewhere in the bottom of a valley, but I am incredibly seen.
