Usually I
blog only about tugboat stuff and how our life revolves around this
crazy life as a tugboat family. This post, however, is taking another
turn.
River life is weird...and tug life is even weirder. It's a constant ebb and flow... up and down...back and forth...in and out. We are constantly trying to plan events and get-togethers around this schedule of coming home and leaving again. Even holidays like Christmas and Thanksgiving get moved around...and celebrated when we can be together.
This past weekend was no exception. For the last few years, Butch/DeckBoss's
family has been organizing an informal reunion/family get together.
Last year in January, we all went to a gigantic house in Blue Ridge GA.
It was cold but a lot of fun! The house was in the Blue Ridge mountains
and we had a lot of fun playing board games, talking, eating, and
catching up on each other's lives. This year we went to Lake Wedowee in Alabama. We had 2 lake houses side by side. The lake and views were gorgeous and the weather was perfect!
We arrived late Friday night. Let me
just say that calling the week before this "difficult and emotionally
draining" would qualify as the understatement of the year. Friday night
on the way to the lake house, I had an asthma attack while I was
driving on these mountain roads. Scariest. Thing. Ever. Luckily, it was
minor and I was able to pull over into one of the 18,000,000 church
parking lots around here and Butch took over driving. A few rescue
inhaler puffs and I was ok. Terrified.....but ok. When we got to the
beautiful lakefront home, it was about midnight. We went to our room,
took a hot shower and crawled into bed.
Oh my.
Hello heaven.
The bed had a memory foam topper over
the mattress. The memory foam topper had a pillow top mattress topper.
There was a fluffy down alternative duvet to cover with.
I swear....I slept on a cloud that
night. A giant, soft, puffy, fluffy cloud from Heaven. For the first
night in a really long time, I slept through the night in incredible
peace and comfort. When Butch woke me for breakfast....I REALLY didn't
want to move. I was cradled in comfort and peaceful warmth. But......bacon called me 😃.
After
breakfast all the guys and some of the girls went to some private
property owned by one of the cousins to shoot guns and blow stuff up.
The rest of the girls went to Dollar General. (Hey, it's the South. It's what we do.) I stayed behind to cook chili and cornbread for dinner.
As
the chili simmered, I went out on the deck. I sat in the sun and
breathed. I breathed in the beauty of the blue sky and the glistening
lake. I breathed in fresh mountain air. I breathed in the sound of the
acorns dropping on the wood deck and the leaves blowing in the cool
October breeze. And I breathed in.....the quiet.
A friend of mine posted on Facebook the other day a quote that said "The quieter you are, the more you hear" At the time, I took that to mean that if you are spending time with a person, you hear them more if you listen and don't dominate the conversation (a skill I need to practice). However, as I reflect, I think it means something else.
Life is too loud. There are ringtones and Facebook "dings"and TVs blaring with 1356 channels. Car doors slamming, horns blowing, incessant chatter...Pandora and Itunes
in our ear buds. Microwaves humming, smoothie makers whirring and
timers beeping in the kitchen. Washers swishing and dryers
tumbling...dishes clanking. It overloads and overwhelms me.
But on the deck....I HEARD for the first time in a long while. I heard water lapping, a child laughing from the other side of the lake, birds chirping, squirrels chattering, acorns falling, and the sound of my own
breathing. I leaned back in the chair to absorb it all and then I heard
the still, gentle voice of God within me saying "Peace....be still." I
sat for the longest time in ages. I let the warm October sun shine on my
face. I let my constant ADD-driven inner feeling of "I need to be doing something productive" go. I let my muscles relax and propped my feet up. I let myself "be still" and I felt His peace.
"Peace......be still."