A few summers ago, I visited Banff National Park and stood at the water’s edge of Lake Louise and Moraine Lake. Frigid, teal water stretched out beneath towering mountains. Both lakes draw water from glacial melt, and standing beside them, I found the beauty breathtaking. Magnificent.
But what stayed with me was the thought of where that water came from. The ice.
Glaciers help shape landscapes by grinding against rock, carrying debris, and leaving sediment behind. Meltwater continues moving and reshaping what the ice leaves behind. At those shores, that process became something more personal. I looked at the water and thought about the glacier giving up pieces of itself to feed it.
That’s where this thought was born: The raw beauty of the deconstruction of something equally as beautiful.
I’ve carried that thought with me since.
There’s a fine line between seeing the world as it is and aching for the world as it should be. I find myself thinking about how easily my feelings influence that view. When something hurts, I notice the things around me that seem to confirm the hurt. The distance. The absence. The places where life looks different from what I imagined.
Then something beautiful catches my attention, and for a moment, I remember how much exists beyond what I’m feeling.
That memory brings me back to the water’s edge. To the beauty in front of me and the ice that helped make it possible. To the question I still carry: How can decay touch so much of the world while beauty still fills it?
The Ice Was Beautiful, Too
The glacier already held its own majesty. Imagine the weight of it, the blue within its crevices, the immense sweep of ice between mountain walls. It had beauty long before there was a lake to photograph.
That matters to me, because sometimes we talk about change as though whatever came before must have been inadequate. We rush to explain why something ended. We search for the lesson, the opportunity, the better thing waiting around the bend. We want to arrive somewhere that makes the difficult miles make sense.
Sometimes, though, what came before was beautiful.
A season of life held real joy. A relationship held moments worth remembering. A home carried laughter through its rooms. There were things we loved for good reason, even if we can now see the fractures running through them.
Their ending doesn’t make that love foolish.
I think there’s a particular vulnerability in admitting that. It can feel easier to dismiss an entire chapter than to acknowledge how much it mattered. If I convince myself there was nothing worth keeping, perhaps I won’t have to feel the weight of what I lost.
But I want to tell the truth about my life, including the parts that resist a clean explanation. Something can have held beauty and still have hurt me. I can recognize why a season ended and still wish certain pieces of it had survived.
Whatever beauty I discover afterward doesn’t erase what it cost me to arrive there.
The Ache and the Appreciation
I wonder how often we stand at the edge of our own changed landscape and feel pressure to choose which feelings we can acknowledge. If we acknowledge something good, does that mean we’ve stopped grieving? If we still miss what was, does that mean we’re ungrateful for what remains?
At the water’s edge, both seem possible.
Psychological research found that people could experience happiness and sadness together, including during meaningful transitions such as college graduation. One feeling did not necessarily cancel the other. Their findings give language to something many of us recognize: a moment can hold more than one emotional truth.
When I think back to those lakes, I wonder what the glaciers looked like before I ever stood there. I wish I could have seen them in their fullness, and I still marvel at the water I did see. The ache and the appreciation can occupy the same breath.
I want to make room for that in my life. In The Shelter We Find, I explored how uncertainty about home could share the same day with joy and belonging.
As a father, I can understand the tension of celebrating who a child is becoming while missing the version of them who needed me differently. The pride belongs there. So does the tenderness. Loving the next chapter doesn’t require me to stop reaching back toward a page I wish I could read again.
Maybe that’s part of what makes these moments so difficult to explain. We keep searching for a single word when the experience asks for a whole sentence.
I am grateful for what is here, and I still miss what was. I want to be able to say that without apologizing for either half.
What I Bring to the Shore
I know how quickly pain can become the place from which I interpret everything else. A silence feels heavier. A disappointment seems to confirm a larger story. I start looking for evidence that the world is as empty as I feel, and I overlook what doesn’t fit.
I’ve caught myself doing that. I can focus so closely on what’s missing that I barely notice what’s standing in front of me.
That’s a hard thing to admit, because the hurt is real. I don’t want to dismiss it or talk myself out of a feeling that deserves attention. I want to give it room without letting it claim every inch of the view.
According to research, links the habit of accepting difficult thoughts and emotions without judgment to better psychological health. Looking at the acceptance of our inner experiences; it did not suggest that we must approve of the circumstances that hurt us.
I take that as an invitation to stop adding criticism to what already aches. I don’t have to scold myself for grieving before I allow myself a moment of gratitude.
Some days, that may mean acknowledging the sadness and then staying present long enough to hear a familiar laugh. Taking in the light across the water. Allowing a conversation to reach me instead of deciding, before it begins, that nothing will help.
I don’t always manage it. Some days my attention returns to the empty places almost immediately. But I want to keep practicing. Personal growth, for me, includes learning to notice when I’ve mistaken one painful part of the landscape for the whole of it. That question also runs through Beyond the Fog, where I explored how our experiences shape what we believe we can see.
The Splendor That Remains
My faith gives this wonder another dimension. I look at a world that I believe bears the wounds of the Fall, and the splendor that remains amazes me. If creation can move me this deeply now, what must its first morning have been like?
I can’t picture it fully.
I can only start with what I know: mountains that make me stop mid-sentence, water that draws my eyes back again and again, and the quiet sense of being small in the presence of something magnificent. Adventure keeps bringing me into places where my explanations run out before my wonder does.
In Romans 8:19–23, Paul describes creation groaning as it awaits liberation from decay. That passage gives language to the longing I feel: the wonder of what is here and the ache for what God has yet to restore.
There’s room for both in that picture. Creation bears its wounds, and we wait with it. Faith allows me to acknowledge the ache while carrying hope for restoration beyond what I can presently see.
That hope makes me want to pay closer attention to what’s here. To care for what remains. To allow beauty to stir something in me, even when I have questions I can’t resolve. I don’t need to explain every fracture before I can stand in awe of the mountain. I can bring my questions with me and still let the view move me.
Learning the Contours of the Shore
A lake’s beauty doesn’t make the disappearance of a glacier inconsequential. There is still something precious to protect. The metaphor has to leave room for that, or it becomes another way of rushing past what matters.
In our own lives, finding beauty after loss doesn’t require us to decide that the loss needed to happen. I can value the compassion I’ve developed and still wish I had learned it under gentler circumstances. I can appreciate a friendship that met me in a difficult season without feeling grateful for everything that brought me there.
We may carry questions we can’t answer while we learn the contours of the shore.
I think about the attention climbing requires. You can study a route from the ground, but once you’re on the rock, you still have to look closely at the hold in front of you. The next movement asks you to respond to what is actually there.
There’s something in that I need beyond the cliff.
I can spend so much time measuring life against the route I expected that I miss the place where I can put my hand now. A relationship worth tending. A conversation worth having. An ordinary afternoon with someone I love.
Perhaps resilience can look like that: giving the life in front of me enough attention to participate in it, even while I’m still grieving parts of the life I expected.
In The Shadow and the Summit, I wrote about the courage it takes to look inward and face what we carry. That work of self-discovery continues here, in the questions I’m willing to ask and the small choices I’m still able to make.
Making Room for the Whole View
I’m still learning how to see the world as it is while carrying my longing for what it should be. My feelings come with me. So do my memories, my faith, and the things I haven’t made peace with yet.
I want to be honest about the things I wish had unfolded differently. I also want to remain open to a moment that asks nothing of me except that I notice it. Some days, that might be all the beauty I can take in. It still counts.
Perhaps you know that shoreline, too. You’ve arrived somewhere you never planned to be, and you’re trying to understand what this place asks of you. Before you rush to name the lesson, give yourself permission to name what you miss. What was beautiful? What mattered? What do you wish you could have kept?
Then, when you’re ready, look at what is here. Is there something you want to care for? Someone you want to move closer to? A small part of your life that still invites your attention?
You can take your time with those questions. I am taking mine.
I think back to Banff, to the frigid, teal water and the thought that followed me home. I hope I keep looking closely enough to notice the water, remember the ice, and make room for everything that view holds.
Can I love what is here without pretending I don’t miss what was?
I want to keep learning how.