We had such wonderful weather today! It was somewhere around 50 I think! Eli and I walked to the post office, and then it was just too nice to go back home so we headed to the park also.

The park we go to is on the top of one of the higher hills near us, and although it is only a very short walk from our house, the view there makes you feel like you have journeyed to a different world! The sky surrounds you on everyside and you can see for miles! The horizon is decorated with distant hills and the rolling mountains of Pennsylvania's "Endless Mountains" region. There seldom are other visitors at the park when we are there, so it is usually an unbelievably quiet, peaceful place to be.

Today I climbed on a swing and remembered again just how much I love swinging! There is just something about it...pushing with all of your might and propelling yourself as high as you can and as fast as you can and looking up as the wind blows your hair back and seeing nothing but the clouds above you! That feeling, that moment, stirs in me the deepest of emotions! It seems to dare ANYTHING at all to distract me. It seems like, in that moment, my Heavenly Father reaches down and cups my face in His hands and gently draws me to focus on Him.

I know, I know, it is just a simple childish amusement in the local park, but to me, there is just something about the soaring and dipping and soaring again that just seems to make all the problems that boggle my mind sort themselves out. It gives me a new perspective and a chance to see beyond the little things that tend to grow bigger than they should in my mind. It gives me a glimpse of joy and makes my heart want to sing. It fills me with wonder at the fact that God would chose to redeem me and know me and speak with me and allow me to know Him. It washes away earth and puts heaven before my eyes in a way that makes me see nothing else.

It has been that way for as long as I can remember. If I think back on difficult days, conundrums, disappointments, and cunfusions in my life, the memory of those moments in bound tightly to the memory of an hour or two spent on a swing, pouring out my heart to a God who listens, cares, and understands. And He is not silent in those moments. I have never been very good at listening to Him, but something about the wind and the beauty and the height...it lets me glimpse just enough of His presence to close my mouth and hear Him.

So, today I thank God for swingsets, and the miniature theophanies that occur there.