I have a hard time articulating myself usually, so today I'm letting Donald Miller do it for me. This is from Feet of Trees:

In the first moments after I wake up, especially in the winter when I have left my windows open, I am quite taken aback by my existence; my hands, my eyelids, the feel of my feet rubbing against the blanket. In moments like this, I get the feeling that life is a great deal more complex than I am able to understand. I feel in these moments that I am fairly intricate and amazing; a speaker for a mouth, two cameras for eyes, sticks for legs, a computer for a head, a million sensors in a million places.

...I confess, I feel there is a God who is very big and who understands everything.

In the morning, when I get over these little moments of epiphany about how complex my construction is, I begin to fear the God that is, because he made all this that is our existence and he understand its physics. Whatever it is that understand the physics of this thing that is happening to us would have to be quite remarkable, with giant oaks for feet, perhaps, and a voice like wind through a forest and a mind that creates creations of which it might ponder in a way of learning what it already knows.

Love.

A few weekends ago I headed down to the Springs to visit my dad while my mom was out of town. I was looking through things, as I often do while I'm at home, and I came across a small calendar/planner. It looked like it was printed in the 60's or 70's and when I opened it, I realized that it was, in fact, pretty old.

It was my mom's when she was graduating high school and entering college. I think she had probably recently found it, and I was happy to stumble upon it. As I flipped through the pages, I smiled because her handwriting looked so similar to how it does now. She had things written in it like "first weekend at IU!" with a smiley face next to it, that to this day she still writes next to her calendar entries. She had different birthdays marked, event dates, and the norm for anyone's planner.

What made me the happiest were what I saw in the month of October.

"My 18th birthday!

Mark's 19th birthday!"

My mom had my dad's birthday marked as well as a date marked "one year anniversary." It was really special to see my mom's teen-aged swoonings for my dad so many years ago. But what was most special was knowing that they are still very much in love some 30+ years later.

In today's culture, or under any circumstances really, I am very lucky.

Their freshmen year at Indiana University.