This is my world right now--zoomed in close, agonizing over the details. The details--be they beautiful or boring, painful or pleasant--the details are our everything. We wake in the morning with them staring us in the face and we lay our heads on our pillows at night either basking in their fullness or formulating how to survive or change them. I have heard Oprah say "love is in the details." And so it is. Perhaps that is why the details, the moments of life that you never forget and that form your very being, consume our constant focus. They are crucial.
There is beauty in the details--even the painful ones. It is a beauty born of love. Like mental photographs the details tell a story. These stories form the epic that is our lives. Even these epic stories of our lives are just the details, the footnotes even, in the history books of mankind. One can only imagine how our histories fit into the great scheme of the Creator's works.
Details produce the defining points of our lives. This is one of the great defining points in my life. I write the story that will define me by how I endure the trials I face. These are not easy days. This story is difficult to forge. But I believe that if I am careful and I can keep a firm mind and a heart full of love, even if it is an aching love, a thing a great beauty will emerge from these details.
Whatever our trials are in life, the gospel gives us the gift of perspective to guide us in our sorrow and affliction. In the grand scheme of my life, this will be but a chapter. It is hard for me to imagine a day I don't think about Camille with every breath, but I know in my head that will come. Part of me is terrified for that day to come. The better part of me refuses to live forever in this chapter. This chapter will form the rest of my story, but I hope that by the 500th page of my 1000 page life I am not still mourning the event of this too early, too sorrowful chapter of my life.
I can only hope the pain of this detail will make all the colors brighter, all the laughter heartier, all the love deeper, all the moments sweeter. I can only hope that this defining detail will significantly impact the whole of the eternal perspective of my life for the positive. That by enduring well the Lord can make of my life a work of art.
