Rock’n Trip on Highway 1

Three words: purple, haze, rocks. This describes the previous week’s energies. On Monday the weather surprised with seventy degrees after a busy workday, we couldn’t resist a trek to the east coast, our beloved Virginia Beach. It is an innate longing within Rory’s heart to touch her toes to the sand, to encompass her ankles with the cold salty sea at any available opportunity. Cody and Ryder were fully willing to oblige.

As the seagulls and blackbirds squawked at us from above we soaked in the new spring sun, an old friend that had been tucked away for winter. The salty and bright white foam tickled their toes and the chilly water pinkened their feet. Shells were collected, shined, and sorted. Pants were soaked and smiles grew ever wider. The wagon’s wheels rolled down the boardwalk with lazy anticipation of breezy and sunny days to come. Thankfulness filled me in overwhelming waves. Three children deep into parenting, a dedicated husband, a job that challenges me and inspires, I felt exactly where I needed to be and it felt oh-so-good.

Arriving home, as they warmed in the bath, I could feel the day’s excursion challenging my back muscles to calm. I pushed the unease aside and carried on with the evening’s activities. It was Monday and Friday was already on the horizon. To travel from our sunny east coast of the magnificent U.S.A. to the equally brilliant west coast by Friday was an exciting thought. A few months prior I was challenged to assist in coordinating a girls-get-away for my friend Martha. She too is in the trenches of child rearing and her wise husband, Josh, saw a reprieve was necessary to guarantee future sanity for his bride. I took the challenge to will myself to travel across the country, without children, and accompany my dear friend in her sanity break. I know, I know, great sacrifice. The medal is in the mail.

Fast forward from Monday night to Friday morning. Early morning flight, Martha, Kristy, and I buckled our big silver flight buckles, tighten the straps, and headed to San Francisco, California. Convincing the flight attendants to give us copious amounts of water as the days between Monday night and Friday morning were filled with the most precarious of events. Kidney stones. Four. My own. Determined pals (thank you Martha and Josh) pushing for quick surgeries, getting a temporary stint placed 24 hours prior to buckling into my seat, we were in between the clouds in no time.

There is something equally freeing and unknown with traveling. For me, it is like pulling back on the lens of a camera, the angle widens, and the perspective shift is drastic. The lens allows the angles to sharpen and the world is broadened in a way that reveals so much more. I take a breath and quiet, absorbing my newly revealed surroundings with awe and admiration. A part of the world that is someone else’s tight focus is what will bring greater perspective to mine at home.

The colors of the west coast are a vast pallet of purples, yellows, pinks, and soft blues. The plants are sharper, the angles abrupt. But dotted throughout the craggy rocks and jagged mountains, there are vibrant flowers of yellow and pink, purple and gold. The ocean that laps against the coast, softening and smoothing, polishing and encompassing, is equally intimidating and inviting. The vastness, the widened lens of life is speaking glorious.

 

The wonder of God’s creation, a Heaven-meets-earth is clearly evident. With every twisty turn, guided by the double yellow lines of U.S. Highway 1, the west coast and its vast seas are revealing the nature of God with absolute perfection. Our hearts as mommies, friends, wives, and children of God were challenged to accept what was before us. We could merely chalk it up to the wonders of earth, the evidence of nature at its best, or we could allow it to speak to our hearts of the greatness He is. How He has the smallest flowers speckled between the dangerous cliffs of the northern California coast protected from the winds and yet simultaneously the crashing waves are dissolving rocks from their posts. The contrast of gentleness and strength is breathtaking. Looking back on a week of coast to coast beauty and the rocks of life battling between, I am in love, evermore, with the God who is gentle to reveal life in due time and strong enough to hold me through the rock slides that are essential to polish the life He has given to me.

A special thank you to my friend Jenny Sue Flannagan. She held my hair as I continuously lost my Girl Scout cookies before making it to the doctors where we learned of my internal rock slide. She listened with attentive ears to the surgeon and nurses. To my other friends – Heather, Keri, Kristy, Sara, Paulette, and many more – who made meals and wrangled Mini Macks as I lived in the haze between Monday and Friday. To my dear husband who said, “Go” to the west coast and is manning the trenches at home. To Alex who hosted three overtired mommas, fed them potpies while strolling through Golden Gate Park. To the quick teams at Patient First and Urology of Virginia (Dr. Fabrizio, Dr. Rosenfeld, and Dr. Tonkin) for their compassion for a hereditary rock slide victim who needs to drink more water. To Josh Wynne, who loves his Martha with absolute dedication and sent us away to pull back on the perspective of life as mommies.