Sometimes Getting Stuck Is A Good Thing....

    It is finally feeling like Spring here!!!!! Wahooo, it has been one long and rainy season. I am always amazed at how much lighter my heart feels with a little bit of sunshine.

Like these jack-o-lantern smiles that I just cannot get enough of...

or Georgia snuggling in bed with me when she first wakes up whispering, "Mama ! I had a good sleep!"

The other day Doug got to help interview our good friends who are adopting from Ethiopia in front of our church. While they went to speak for the second service I took their kids and ours and drove around. So 5 kids age 7 and under can have some awesome wacky conversations. At one point, out of the blue Carter shouted, "I know all about catlle guards!" and proceeded to tell us all about them!

This brought up such a vivid image for me and God has used it over and over again for the last few days. I am not sure that I am totally done chewing it over but I wanted to share. You see I feel like we are in limbo/waiting on a number of things right now, Georgia's health stuff, Ravenna's blood stuff...we are moving to Hood River sometime next month but not sure when yet. Lots of little and not so little stuff. So when Carter brought up cattle guards it just made me smile.

You see, back in my 20's I worked at Young Life's Wilderness Ranch (in fact I just looked up their website and their promo video is still one that was taken from a trip I guided, how crazy is that? http://www.younglife.org/ResourceLibrary/Videos/YoungLifeCamping/WildernessRanchCampVideos.htm). It is a tiny backpacking camp. I got to guide groups of teenagers on week-long backpacking trips and teach them about Jesus. Some of those trips still burn so brightly in my memory.

The story that keeps circling in my mind is this: It actually was not a trip I guided but sure made an impact. Most of the trips that left from Wilderness Ranch went in busloads to trailheads...up above 10,000 feet for the week and then back down to be picked up at a different trailhead to be driven back to camp. One particular trip hiked right out of camp and then back in via the old dirt road into. This story takes place with a group using that trail. They hiked happily out and spent the week in the glory of the San Juan mountain sunshine talking about Jesus. One of the campers listened a lot but wasn't sure what to make of all of it. As the week came to a close they slowly hiked back down the dusty road to basecamp.

On that road there is one tricky but not very tricky spot...they had to cross one of these:

Yep, it's a cattleguard.

Before crossing one, we always told kids to be careful, to watching their step. Well, this one camper must not have heeded those rules and you guessed it, got their foot stuck right in the cattle guard! And they were stuck, completely stuck, beyond pulling out stuck. So...the rest of the group kept heading back to camp to get some help to free this poor fellow. But hiking a mile or so at the end of a long week when you are not really sure you want to go back to reality can take awhile...which gave this guy quite a bit of time to think. There he sat on the cattleguard on a dusty, lonesome road with nothing but time. I do not know all that went on during that time but I know he walked back into camp a different guy, having decided to give his life to  Jesus on that dusty old cattleguard.

So as I sit...straining against the waiting. I keep picturing that darned cattleguard. I can almost feel it, the sun on my shoulders, the smell of high Colorado air....and I find myself yearning for something else, that the Lord would change my heart, that He would leave no stone unturned in teaching me in this time, in this unknown, in this stuckness, all of Him in every single part of me.

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,

neither are your ways my ways,”

declares the LORD.

“As the heavens are higher than the earth,

so are my ways higher than your ways

and my thoughts than your thoughts.

 As the rain and the snow

come down from heaven,

and do not return to it

without watering the earth

and making it bud and flourish,

so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater,

so is my word that goes out from my mouth:

It will not return to me empty,

but will accomplish what I desire

and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.

You will go out in joy

and be led forth in peace;

the mountains and hills

will burst into song before you,

and all the trees of the field

will clap their hands.

Instead of the thornbush will grow the juniper,

and instead of briers the myrtle will grow.

This will be for the LORD’s renown,

for an everlasting sign,

that will endure forever.”

Isaiah 55:8-13