Skip to main content

Day 25: Write About Travel


    


Before last summer, my wife and I sat down and dreamed out loud.  We wanted to take our family on road trip, a real vacation.  Our oldest son was about to graduate form high school.  We were preparing to serve at a Christian camp for kids after the school year ended. We were definitely going to need a time of rest and relaxation.      So we prayed and hoped that God would be gracious to us.  Our prayers were answered when some friends of ours offered to let our family spend a week in their condo in Estes Park Colorado.  All we needed was a means to get there and food for the week.  We were overjoyed! After my son’s graduation and our camp week, we loaded up the family and drove to Colorado!

I still can’t believe we did it!  My wife and I took turns driving.  We drove in shifts until we were both so tired that we couldn’t go any farther.  The kids sat in the back, laughed, ate sacks and napped when ever they got tired. I played my collection of road music by Earth, Wind and Fire, Cameo, John Legend and Cold Play.  (to name a few)  We drove through Oklahoma with excitement, knowing that we were getting closer to Colorado. I felt so grateful the whole time.  I’m sure a lot of families get to travel and see all kinds of cool places.  But I’ve never been able to take my kids to places I haven’t or they haven’t seen before in person. 

I’ve seen mountains before.  But until I saw them in person, I realized that I hadn’t experienced the mountains before.  Este Park Colorado is the most beautiful place I’ve ever been.  It was my wife’s time to drive when we were approaching our destination.  I remember we were all tired but still looking around, like “This is so cool.”  We were just looking around until my wife makes this curve  and the mountains just seems to open up to us!  It was breath taking!  I never felt so small before.  Everything looked so huge and open.  We all knew that we were about to discover something truly amazing.

When I discover, I come alive. My soul is awakened from its predictable slumber and a shock runs through my veins! I can hardly breathe, but I can't look away.  I am captivated, taken by surprise by something fearfully beautiful.  When I discover, I am called to worship God. Though I marvel at His handiwork, I am compelled to seek follow His trail, seek His footprint.  All the while I am terrified with wonder and graciously invited.  I want to take in that moment, be present in His presence.  When I discover, I can hear His bare feet crunching over the mountain snow.  I can feel His breath in the cool morning breeze.  I can hear His voice in the strong currents of streams, calling out to me, inviting me to walk with Him and create something that was inspired by what I discovered. 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Watching My Step

I've always had big feet. It's true. There was never a moment in my childhood when my feet were not an object of frustration and ridicule. And those "dogs" were all over the place, facing the wrong direction, tripping over themselves, tripping over coffee tables, desks, chairs, other people. It was embarrasing. Watching my step was a full time job. Since becoming a man, I've mastered my former oppressors (my size 14's) and you would hardly noticed my attention to detail. However, today, at 40, I'm still watching my step. With so much experience and success with walking and watching my step, I've discovered that the same is true in my spiritual life as well. I haven't always watched my step in life and of course, it resulted in me finding myself in all kinds of traps, snares and dead ends. I've spent years tripping over my sinful habits and walking down dirt roads that lead to nowhere. To no one's blame but my own. After experiencin...

She Knew Me. (My Tribute to Dr. Maya Angelou)

I didn't know her as one knows a neighbor a relative or a friend she was not in my list of contacts or photographs or yearbooks of a time long ago no, i did not know her but she knew me she definitely knew me she knew my pain, my struggle her words, songs, poetry they checked my pulse gauged my temperature measured my resolve her suffering leveled my consciousness she was quite acquainted with joy, pain silence, sound, standing, dancing stillness and marching on she defied invisibility and found her place centerstage I loved her for it no, I did not know Dr. Maya Angelou but she knew me she definitely knew me.

The Force of Divorce (Part 3)

If we as adults experience this horrific effect of the force of divorce, how much more do our children ache and groan from an unreachable wound? A wound that will fester and spread an infection, if at some point they never get healing. Even though I was blessed with my period of beforeness, the force of divorce crashed down on my little life, sending the foundation of everything I held as stable and true into a violent whirlwind. And I was one of the “lucky” ones, by the our society’s perspective. I was never physically abused by my father; never had to sleep under the bed at night for fear of what the night would bring. I was swept away in the middle of the night by my mother and a priest who rushed us to the airport. Somehow my dad caught up with us and I remember he had one of my arms and my mom had the other both of them pulling me in opposite directions. How about that for a visual of a broken family? My mother won the tug of war and I boarded an airplane...