In the mountains, in a teeny speck of a town, three and a half hours from everything… I feel like I’m beginning to recover a piece of myself that goes wandering off on really important tasks in my “normal” life.
A mind-bendingly generous family from our church is hosting us at their ranch home. When I say “ranch” I am not intending the picture you might have in your head of a one-story tract home in a master planned community.
Ranch. Like ranch. Cows. ATV’s. Shotguns. Big meals. Big trees. Big nature. It is nothing like my neighborhood — where it isn’t uncommon to get a letter from the HOA informing me that my garage has remained opened too long. No. This is a different world.
It’s a green and unmanicured world. Somehow in all of it — getting away, I haven’t found a new ministry tool. I haven’t seen the road clearly marked out for me for the next forty years (although I did get to look through a pair of really cool night vision goggles). But, I’m simply agenda-less. I eat when I’m hungry (too much mostly). I sleep when I’m tired. I laugh. I pray. I walk. I sing (to myself… why ruin everyone else’s time?). I’m remembering what life was like in summer camp. I’m having a blast.
And, when I’m really still, beneath the giant sky in the thick dark of night, something begins to unfold. Perhaps it’s the bigness of everything. Or, more aptly, a recognition of the smallness of myself. I am learning to listen to God again — to hear Him, to hear His voice, and to receive the love I am so willing to talk about but so often fail to experience as my own.
Tonight was salmon and key lime pie. I’ll still be full at breakfast.
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