{ falling & standing }

{ a ruffle and a penelope }

there are moments in life that are filled with such light and clarity...and while this seems like something you'd yearn for, i often find that the clearest moments in my life are those that hurt the most. usually it's finally sinking in that i have to let go. move on. keep walking forward. and because i have a heart that tends to hold tightly to the past, facing the present and embracing the unknown future have always been hard for me. it takes years.

there are years that question

and years that answer

{ zora neale hurston }

many of my lightest / heaviest moments have happened beneath the wide sky of idaho over the past three years. the space in the west fills me with a loneliness and a hope that's impossible to describe. i feel minuscule next to the golden hills, like the tiniest sparkle in the valleys at sundown. it's so good for my soul it hurts.

i just discovered a cache of unedited and unshared photos from my spur-of-the-moment trip to idaho last july. i needed to get out of my hometown desperately and found deep solace in the west, in the home of one of the people on this earth who understands me best --- meaning she always finds a way to draw me out of the shadow and shelter me beneath her wings at the same time.

thank God for all of these things,
for the burdens and the light.


she