Instants of splendor have been stacking up before I can sort them out, and now they are toppling all over. So here I sit by the heater at home (ah, so sweet to be home) with the gulls racketing away as usual in the twilight air, trying to organize and consolidate and do what I love.

I want to hold each instant up for you to taste the air, suck in the majesty. The mountains, the tall trees, the long waterfalls. We saw the desolate and wild and craggy side of Scotland this weekend. (Hello, little hikers!)

I am not usually one to sit back awed. Instead, I like to saturate all the beauty in and hold onto it until it dissolves in my hands. That makes it accessible. But this weekend I was awed as we drove through the mountains. Untouchable beauty.

I love writing this blog not only because I can show you this spectacular place in photos, but because the places and instants you see are set in our story, the plot of our lives that has been planned before we came here. That fact is freeing, because I know that if I’m telling our story, it will make sense. And that fact is freeing because the One who writes our plot is utterly imaginative, and defines beauty. So our story is always, always good and beautiful.

In the same way there is not only beauty in towering mountains, but in the moorlands and emptiness,

and in a slight stream and snowy cliffs,

in the same way---our story is beautiful, too. In instants of resting and listening, in moments of inspiration and in moments of lacking. Just different terrain, but still beautiful.

All stories, to be interesting at all, must have conflict, times when the protagonist has to get through something. So often I want that getting through to be taken out of our plot. But it can't be, because without it, there is no story, not extraordinary.

The one who build beauty up around us for us to notice Him, and who writes our story along beautiful lines—He makes it extraordinary by making us one with him and bringing us through.

As we drove along the famous mountains of Glencoe, and I saw them come together in jagged ravines, I thought of Him hiding us in clefts.

How comforting that our existence is because of something outside us, and something that will protect us.

Seeing such utter and such pure beauty, I thought of how I couldn't even imagine anything more beautiful.

But the most beautiful thing that I can think of is that we are already there.

He is within us.