Where the colours go...

 I have a little bit more time before I move to Girls camp, so I thought I would do one last post, and try to articulate this idea, an image that I've been thinking about for the past month. 
It started when I was sitting in Pittsburgh airport leaving the States and I thought to myself "Where on earth has the last month gone! I feel like I only just left NZ!"
Since then I have thought a lot about where time and experience goes when it's passed you by and I have this image in my head that I want to try and articulate.
There are some moments that we experience more deeply than others, moments of great joy or surprise or pain or peace or community or heartbreak....moments in which we are acutely aware that we are experiencing something special or out of the ordinary, moments that we can step outside of while still being in them and understand that this makes you alive, that it makes you feel. And then the moment passes, you move on and it becomes a memory and it in some ways it seems like that peice of time was just passing by and you happened to be in its path but now it's gone and you are still the same. But I dont think this is true...
I feel like all of those experiences, all the sights, sounds, smells, conversations, hugs, tears, love, pain, smiles, emotion...all of that is a gift from above and as we live them and pass by, they become like colours. Swirls and drops and strokes of colour that mix and blend... in my mind they look like the Northern Lights. Then these colours go down somewhere deep inside us where they can be remembered but not touched anymore, they can't be changed, they just are. And there they expand, dancing and moving, creating in us maturity and experience and growth. The moments that become colours change us in ways that we don't always notice but will always be there. I think sometimes we try to stop the moments leaving, we try and analyse them and record them, or we try to re create such a moment because it made us feel awake for once and we dont want it to pass and for us go back to merely existing.... but in reality it doesnt pass. It stays deep down inside us where the colours go, to a place we cant follow but that is so much a part of us that it doesnt matter.
And I think that one day, the walls of heaven will be painted with these colours...All the moments from every heart that were too sacred to capture or to articulate...they become colours and will line heaven in a glorious display of what life looks like when we are most aware of it happening.

Over the past month I have been blessed to experience many of these moments and i know that I am changed because of it. Where I am able to just be. To experience.
That moment of simple joy when a cardinal lands on the deck next to me, or when a squirrel runs across the telephone wire. When my heart breaks to see my friend hurting so much and I realise how painful love can be. When I go flying through night on a quad bike eating dust and fumes but so filled with the miracle that I can feel so at home on the other side of the world. When I stand on the deck in the middle of a lightning storm and the thunder gets inside me and just for a split second I feel the fear of God. When I stop in the middle of worship with my hands over my face completely overwhelmed by how much of a sinner I am. When we stand back from the canvas we covered and realise that God has appeared in every stroke and every idea, that the art became worship. When I look out over the community love feast and see Jesus eating taco salad and lasagne with the least of these. When I find a tiny chapel in the woods and pour out my heart with tears before the One who knows it best. When I stay up late and laugh till I cry and till I can't breathe, with a friend I only just met. When I hear a NZ accent and I feel such a sharp longing to be with my friends in the same moment that my heart is trying to make a home here. When stand on the end of the dock and watch the dark thunder clouds rolling across the lake toward me...
These moments. These are the moments that colour my life.