Life at 7000 feet

In just a little while John's parents will be arriving for a visit. I've been working like mad trying to get things in order around here and have finally found a few minutes to rest before they arrive. We're looking forward to their visit. Our kids have a long list of things they want to do with their Mimi and Papa. John and I have a list too. We're hoping to get away for an overnight trip while they're here. We haven't done that in such a long time. And we need it.

Last week we took a little road trip to Santa Fe. John was planning to go alone and meet up with a dear friend. He spent a week in Santa Fe last year at a retreat. This year, time and finances didn't allow him to go for the entire time, but he took a couple of days and we tagged along with him. He and his friend were gracious to allow the kids and I to share their time. Anyway, it was beautiful there. The architecture was fascinating, and so was all the art. I read on the internet that Santa Fe is the 3rd largest art market in the US behind New York and Los Angeles. Pretty impressive. Our time was too short to fully explore all that Santa Fe had to offer, though we did get a taste. We hope to go back...alone...sometime. The kids were thrilled though that the hotel had a pool. I'm pretty sure that if you asked them they'd tell you that getting to swim made their entire summer.

We took the long way home from Santa Fe...up through Taos and the Sangre de Cristo mountains. It was the best part of the entire trip for me. It was breathtakingly beautiful. La Veta Pass in southern Colorado is stunning. I think I would move in a heartbeat. We saw grove after grove of aspen and even a herd of elk grazing at dusk. So beautiful. My heart was so sick that I forgot my camera on this trip. Can you believe it? I always have my camera with me...but not this time. Thankfully John's friend took some for me! I was so grateful.

We stopped and ate dinner in Taos and while there this car flagged us down in a parking lot. The folks were from Arkansas and noticed my Arkansas Razorback license plate frame. Turns out they were from Hot Springs...about 20 miles from where we moved here from. We talked for a few minutes and they asked us if we'd heard any Arkansas news that week. We had indeed heard the day we left that Paul Eells, a beloved sportscaster had died in a tragic car accident. I was so sad when John's mom passed that news onto us that morning. I'm a huge Hogs fan and if the Hogs were playing on television, I'd always mute the tv to hear Paul Eells' broadcast. He was such a great guy and his death is a huge, huge loss to the entire state of Arkansas. That same sadness will be felt this fall when the Hogs play and I can't stream the audio from the games. It struck me as odd that we found ourselves in Taos, NM grieving together with fellow Arkansasans over his death. Small world, huh?

Friday afternoon John found a snake in our garage. YIKES! It was pretty small but any size snake is scary to me. He killed it and disposed of it and we still don't know what kind it was. Hopefully non-poisonous. It freaked me out a little that the kids and I had been outside about 30 minutes before he saw it...barefoot of course.

This morning at church we sang on of my new favorite worship songs. It's called AMAZING GOD and it is beautiful. Here are a couple of lines from it: Indescribable, Uncontainable, You placed the stars in the sky and You know them by name, You are Amazing God...and another line...You see the depths of my heart and You love me the same...you are Amazing God. So that particular line about God seeing the depths of my heart really struck me. Right now there is a lot being stirred in the depths of my heart...and truthfully, it is hard for me. God is asking me to journey through some of that stuff right now and I've tip-toed into it. I know He's asking me to go a little deeper and I'm doing that...just very slowly. All that to say that I'm going to take a little break from blogging. I don't know how long a break it will be. I do know that I need to take care of myself right now. My temptation is great on the days that I blog to paint the happy picture of our lives. Truth be told, our lives are happy, very happy. But along with the happy is also some hard stuff. And I need to look at that honestly and wholeheartedly. So...stay tuned. I'll be back and I'm sure I'll have plenty to report. And if you would pray for me while I look at some of this stuff that runs deep...I'd be grateful.