Seeing beauty...

I have been having so much fun sending and reading messages between myself and the others who make up the design team for the soon to be released Scrap In Style TV website. This group of women hails from all over the US and even Canada and the Netherlands. When our minds and creativity and purpose of bringing out the best in others comes together in the launch of this new site, I think we are all in for a real treat. I'll keep you all posted as May 15th draws closer.
I say all that because I have gotten to know some of these amazingly, talented women a bit through their blogs, and through this one, was pointed to one of the most engaging articles I have read in a long while.
You will want to go to this link- an article from the Washington Post, which as I stated, is engaging in topic, but also I thought was so telling of us as people- especially who we are and what drives us in our culture.
It's what I have been wrestling ever since the death of Teagan; the challenge to change my pace of living, and the realization that life is made up of so many choices coming at us each day- that many of us often sacrifice the true beauty of life and living to things that seem to be a "matter of life and death". We run red lights to save time; we sacrifice our health and energy by eating fast food-thinking it is saving us time, when in fact it isn't necessarily even doing that; we fill our lives with television and music and arguing with our spouses about finances and work schedules and whose night it is to go out. We go to bed late and wake up early, hurrying to get everything done on our "to do lists" for that day...only to go to bed late and wake the next morning to the same jobs and argue about more scheduling conflicts and finances and late fees.
Something seems amiss to me...and that came to light in my life, in such a way that I couldn't argue with it, when Teagan died. I still struggle with balancing things in my life, and cooking healthy meals, and finding ways to mix joy and fun into the list of things that have to be done. Like paying taxes. =) Yet I make much more of a conscious effort to look beyond the daily grind, or to simply step back sometimes, slow my life down, and soak up the gifts that God has placed in my life.
As I read through this article, Pearls Before Breakfast, it resonated (no pun intended after you read the article) with me and I just knew I had to post the link here. You will want to read it the whole way through, even though it is a bit lengthy. In the end, it just might make you look {or listen} twice for the beauty around you in your own life. Often times it is there if you are simply willing to stop and take it all in. Many times it even presents itself to you at no cost, other than the fact that you have to be aware and willing to put the seemingly pressing things in your life on hold. God designed us and created us to enjoy our world. We have created chaos and hustle which causes us to miss what God intended for us all along. This article made me realize that it may be happening to us more than we think.
Lest you think that you have all the time in the world for beauty and such, let us not forget and let us pray for the victims of our nation's most recent random tragedy, the deaths of several people on the campus of Virginia Tech. My prayers and sympathies to all the families touched by this horror. Life is precious, and I that message is one that, in my opionion, cannot be repeated enough.