Sometimes There Are Rocky Roads

Sometimes life's roads get a little rocky--

whether it be in marriage...

 or family life...

 or just most anything you try to succeed at. 

You gotta climb boulders...

 survey the log jams...

 and figure out how to deal with all the obstacles.

 You remember that there is always either a way over it...

 under it...

 or through it.

 And sometimes...

you just want to stick out your tongue at it!

 Like when you run out of gas on a back road with a 30-ft. motor home that can't just be backed up and turned around any old where.

 Like when you are all nicely camped and you wake up the next morning, and you can't get the motor home to go into gear

because the transmission has leaked out all the tranny fluid. 

And you turn into a beggar--

managing to get the motor home 20 minutes down the mountain road to the one and only person and place who might have some transmission fluid--a man running a beef jerky shop in a trailer across the road from a towing business.

 You really don't want to be a beggar, so you offer to pay four times as much as two quarts of transmission fluid is worth--and the man takes you up on it. (Who wouldn't?)

 Life is like that.

You run out of gas.

You run out of tranny fluid, adrenalin, energy, strength, gumption, and even ego. (It's been kicked into the dirt for a long time.) And you just kind of limp along hoping not to get caught by one of life's nooses the kids  cleverly dangle from the window above the driver's seat door.

(Besides, who says you are in the driver's seat anymore with three or four teenagers in the house?)

 Sometimes your path is relatively smooth.

 And you forget to watch out for the hidden holes,

the traps and the snares.

 Sometimes you have to test the waters.

 Or test the fallen logs that seem to rock along with your slightly wobbly plans that might turn over at any time under your feet.

 But even along that rocky road, you can sit on the rocks and take time to smell the flowers.

 To look at the stars in the sky at night,

and to turn over the star-shaped flowers on the forest floor during the day

just to admire--

just to worship the Creator.  

 You choose to savor the sweetness of the single ripe wild mountain strawberry...

 You take time to listen to the flowing stream 

and just breathe.

 And when you catch sight of a baby bird fallen from its nest, just learning to fly, looking straight up and listening to the frantic calls of its mother or father,

you remember that you are also just a small and vulnerable pilgrim along the rocky path of life. 

It was never promised that we would have an easy road.

We would sit in the dirt sometimes, 

because we don't always know how to fly over our circumstances.

We just sit in them--looking desperately up to the calls of our Father in heaven--

begging Him for wisdom,

and to show us how to fly.

Trying stumblingly along, learning, making mistakes, trying our wings again,

listening and learning, fluttering and flying,

reminding ourselves that the only one who never makes a mistake 

is he who never does anything.

The one who makes the biggest mistake is he who never tries.

Treasures of the Meadow and Forest

During our day and a half in the mountains, Danny was excited to find a blue columbine--Colorado's state flower.

 

One man's trash--another man's (or little boy's) treasure!

Timmy, Danny and Hannah love to find old bullets along the road. They found hundreds here, and collected them to turn in at the scrap metal--but first to play with like hidden treasure!

 I preferred to lift my eyes to the sunshine meadow--warm with flowers hiding in the grass.

 Jonathan and I explored hand in hand--

or should I say, camera in hand!

 Jonathan even kept finding flowers for me to photograph, or snapped shots himself. 

These were shooting stars.

 And of course asters growing where nothing ought to grow--

just like God brings beauty from ashes,

and rays of sun-colored centers reflecting the sun overhead.

 And lunch consisted of potato chips--sliced and fried in turns by each child except the littlest and "biggest."

Mom did those.

 A marmot that chattered and screamed and ran at our vehicle and then fled back to his rock and scuttled under backwards, then out again, chattering at us like he was sure we were going to toss him some crumbs.

 And then we found this sign. 

I should say, Jonathan found it. 

He noticed the scribbles almost too small and light to see--and looked at me!

 "FALLING [in love] ROCK[s]"!

So we had Sam take this snap--

and a picture is worth a thousand words!

What each other's arms mean to us, reminds us that always 

"underneath are the everlasting arms."

 And how the warning of "FALLING ROCK"--the message of judgment and law and doom--

is transformed into the message: "For God so loved...:"

"For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world,

but that the world through Him might be saved."

Hearts transformed by His love need fear no falling rock of judgment.

"For those who fall on that stone shall be broken,

but on whomever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder."

So let us fall, O Christ, upon You the Rock, and be broken.

Only let not Your judgment fall upon us and grind us to powder!

Another treasure along the forest trail--a bit of sky upon the ground.

 And more Colorado flowers, almost as tall as Danny and Hannah.

 And then the wild strawberries--so worth the search!

 Tiny forest sweetness--hunkering low.

Nothing so sweet in the tops of the forest trees--

 only low to the ground.

"He that is down need fear no fall; 

He that is low no pride."

wrote John Bunyan in a poem we decided today to memorize.

Commercial strawberries can never match the tender forest sweetness of these tiny berries of July mountains.

And so we search and find the tiny tidbits and nibble like bees attracted to nectar.

 Like insects covering these white blossoms not because they are grand,

or pompous, 

or all that colorful or great.

But because they are sweet.

 And then there are these blue-purple blossoms, reflecting the reflection of the sky--

sky-blue treasures of the woodland dell.

While the Dew Is Still on the Roses

But before we talk about roses....

Last weekend the girls and I made lots of food for the next couple days: bacon-wrapped jalapenos (which we were going to take to feed some that were helping our new pastor move in) deviled eggs, potato salad, etc.  The girls have stepped up so much since Crystal went to Africa.

 

 The little boys think pond water on frogs is preferable to dew on roses. They collected no less than 41 little frogs after the last rain, in this bucket. And yes, they did soon later free them back to the pond!

 We didn't let Crystal's absence keep us from having fun! We decided to camp in the mountains for a couple days.

While Jonathan and the children happily collected old twigs and dry pine needles for the campfire....

 I explored nearby.

 And the heart of an eastern girl drank in the budding wild roses.

 And the fully blossomed ones, too.

 Morning of camp found Carrie making a luscious breakfast of bacon, eggs, and skillet toast...

 which we ate out by the fire.
Here Jonathan is bringing a huge old bunch of dead branch to stir the fire to life. 

And isn't it amazing how God can take the dry and the dead and the old and turn it into a blazing fire

for His glory? Until the smoke is all away, and you must back off from all the heat, 

and honor the blaze that burns the chaff

and the fire that glows in the morning coolness.

 And then as you go on exploring, there is no end of trees:

trees that stand upright,

and trees that have sprawled, all over the forest floor,

cluttering,

dead, 

tripping up those who are looking for God's glory. 

 And we--

we have to choose.

Do we allow logs--those logs in our brother's eye 

and the ones in our own--

do we let them trip us?

Or do we use them as bridges--to cross over the rushing streams,

 to get us places we never reached before?

Everyone crossed this log. Even Mom. 

We all made it. 

We got over that beam in our eye, and that log in our brother's eye. 

 We faced the uprooted tree--

where the shallow life resulted in the wind blowing, and the storm lashing, 

and the tree falling-

 and we had a choice: to live an uprooted life, or to become more firmly rooted,

where "he shall be like a tree, planted by the rivers of water, whose leaf also shall not wither, 

and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper."

 God of our rivers,

God of our storms,

God of our lives, root us and ground us in You!

 And an eastern girl's heart aches just a bit as she takes a picture of a dewy patch of wild strawberries.

 And an almost blossoming rosebud.

 And we walk along the path of life,

where sometimes a little child shall lead them.

 Sometimes the way is soft, like moss to our feet.

 And sometimes we pause in the shadow of those uprooted trees...

 remembering that God transforms the broken places of our lives,

the stumps, the leftovers,

slowly but surely into wonderful, workable humus--the stuff that the forest floor is made of,

the stuff that the ants and bacteria consume and transform into soil that grows things beautiful...

 like more wild roses,

with heart shaped petals

like the one Danny discovered and brought with shining eyes to his dad and mom.

And are we willing to be made into humus, to be disintegrated, 

to disappear into nothingness

so He can be everything?

Are we willing to leave our heart in His hand,

to mold and fashion, to purify and beautify--

until it is His dew that is seen on the roses?