Philosophical musings three days back from vacation

We're back! It was so relaxing--a great week hanging out with my sister and her family, doing girlie-things with my little niece, and laughing with Steve about a million little nothing/somethings that we hadn't had the time to notice in awhile. Steve and I even got to go out on the boat with my Dad, something that hasn't happened in a long, long time.

Last year, I spent my week in Rangely sitting by the lake reading (okay, absorbing might be a better word) a book of quotes by C.S. Lewis I'd grabbed from the library. It gave me some heady, happy moments, in that it felt like every word was an inspired encouragement written just for me.

So I went into this year wondering what my amazing, fabulous, inspirational book would be. I'd just finished writing my own book, and was still negotiating the transition of our entire lives from Cambridge to Ithaca, so I was pretty depleted (Read: so tired I barely knew my name). But no such book was forthcoming. I had some fun reading moments: escaping into a couple of novels, finding my friend Paul mentioned in a book on writing a novel in a month, sitting around the fire at night with Steve, Meg, and her husband Pat as we all dove into different worlds. Good stuff. But I didn't find the book or the paragraph or the single sentence that I could tack up over my desk here at home to remind me of why or how to live.

I needed that sentence.

But a strange thing happened when we got back (after Steve recovered from the food poisoning, and I recovered from the 11 hour drive and the Burgar King chicken sandwich): I felt like down inside, I knew something about my life--what to focus on, what is extraneous and stressful and needs to go--that I didn't know before. I'm not afraid of blowing it anymore, even if things blow up around me. I'm not sure I can describe it, but it's good. Better than a pithy quote, better than a book that stares at me from my shelf and says, There must be something more... Something inside that feels suspiciously like God saying, You're gonna be amazed by how this all turns out...just wait.

I'm not always so good at waiting. But if I'll be amazed? I'll try a little harder :)

Thanks for listening. It's good to be home!