You know it’s a good vacation when I forget to take pictures with my camera. The only pics I have are from Instagram… so my apologies go out to my followers there. It’s a repeat show for you.

In Eureka there are old springs that used to be considered “healing waters.” This is my favorite. It’s a cave just below the ground. It was 100 degrees above those stairs when I took the picture. Down below it was a gorgeous 65. Had I been living in Eureka during the pre-air conditioner days I’d have parked a chair down in the cool darkness and set up a summer home down there in nature’s air conditioner.

There’s always a candle lit down there. If feels a bit like church to me. It’s impossible not to be reverent when you see unique and beautiful places like this, or when you think about the clear water bubbling under the ground that was once considered magic. I’m so thankful God’s imagination is beyond mine.

I’ll be honest folks.

Life hasn’t been all peaches and roses lately. It’s been more like an airplane ride, only I’m strapped to the nose of the plane and the wind speed is making it impossible to close my eyes.

But just for this weekend I forgot about all that. I thought about how beautiful life is. How it’s not just parking lots and commutes and stressful work situations and lonely nights by myself. There’s a whole big world out there, full of sparkling springs and caves and Victorian homes and restaurants within walking distance. It’s seasides and sunsets and crickets chirping at twilight. It’s Jane’s laughs and giggles at bath time, it’s hope that things can, and will, change.

I also realized that sometimes when we pray to God for a change in our life, it doesn’t happen overnight. It comes on slowly, at it’s own pace… in His own time. I think that’s happening in my life right now. No overnight miracles… just slow, cautious steps toward something a little different. A little better. A little closer to the feeling of cool calm air I found in this spring, just below the surface.

I look tired in this picture because I am. So very tired.

No matter the trials, no matter the stresses, the Lord is still with me.