That Magic Week

This August, I had the privilege of witnessing God’s love manifested in a place: The Grand Canyon. His love is preserved in the fossil beds, built up in the multi-billion-year-old layers, carved into the grooves of rock. The patience, the care, the beauty: it’s all delivered through the persistence of the Colorado River, ever-flowing and continually changing that extravagant place into a new work of love.

Our crew, most of my dad’s side of the family, was in the Canyon for 8 days and 226 miles. My grandma asked that her ashes be spread there, which was our mission. The outcome? Abundant grace. Peaceful love. The making of thousands of tiny memory-instants. It was the best way I can imagine spending a week: having the opportunity to just be with one another was such a gift.

I hope the piece I offer below succeeds in conveying even a little sliver of the grace God gave my family and I during that magic week:

Were you paying attention?

Did you absorb the colors, feel the breeze, sense the energy in the splashes that arose from 
     the magical Colorado?

I did.

Were you scared?

Afraid of critters – scorpions, mice, snakes, bats –

Pieces of the canyon toppling on you while you slept,

Pushing your mental and physical strength as you suspended your body by four limbs on 
     slippery stone in the middle of a slot canyon?

Did you fear, even for a moment, that we might flip in the midst of Crystal or Lava Falls 
     rapids?

Did you hear the cicadas?

Smell the tasty freshness of the brush after thunderstorms that rolled in and out with ease?

Anticipate the beauty of each new rock layer of the canyon revealed around the bend?

Did you…

Feel the rush of jumping off the boat or of scrambling up a canyon wall or of sitting in 
     silence with beauty towering over you?

Contemplate the billions of years during which God crafted this place and the risks it took 
     other humans to discover and explore it and live there?

Pray while watching a shooting star and its wondrous tail flash across the light-speckled 
     night sky?

Marvel at tadpoles and wade through muddy water that stained your skin and caked your 
     hair?

Did you notice how nature has full reign there?

Did you rejoice at the blue color of the Little Colorado River?

And proceed to make a human train through a rapid

That ended up in a big puddle of family and body parts and laughs and sputters and joy?

And swallow mouthfuls of the river with your head thrown back and your eyes squinty and 
     your arms flailing all about?

Did you rise and set with the sun?

Did you encounter the Son?

Did the experience change you in ways you needed to be changed?

Did you stand in wonder at the base of a waterfall Grams jumped off of, and then jump off 
     of it yourself?

Did you reflect on the fact that none of us would be here –

Yes, here:

In the world,

Experiencing this glorious life in the way that we currently are –

Without her?

Did you miss her?

Me too.

Did you find love, and give it all away?

Did you sing

And dance

And laugh

And play

And swim

And bathe

And play cards

And pack up

And hike

And work a bag line

And cook

And clean

And huddle under a tent

And pass around Twizzlers and Sour Patch and gorp and peanut butter pretzels

And talk

And sit

And remember

And cry

And learn

And celebrate

And give thanks

And frolic

With your family

And two awesome guides

And some of your best friends on the whole planet

In the midst

Of God’s endlessly majestic

And utterly indescribable creation

For one week of uninterrupted adventure and joy?

I did.