I’m getting to that age where I understand that very little in this life is actually in my control. I can control the way I treat people. I can mostly control the way I react to situations. And, I can control how if I choose to keep getting up when life knocks me down. That’s about it. However, knowing and even understanding that doesn’t mean that I’m any more happy about it or that it means my life is over because I can’t have complete control ( I may have some control issues I’m still working on).
This week, I had the chance to head out of town and go camping and hiking with a group of women. Some who live local to me and some who were from the Las Vegas area. We went to the Valley of Fire State Park in Nevada. If you have never been you are missing out. It is super rad and not very far from Vegas. There were about 20+ of u women enjoying our time in nature.
We had the pleasure of not only hiking a bunch but also sitting around and amazing fit pit nestled in the red rocks, meeting new people and of course my favorite, seeing wildlife. Don’t get me wrong I didn’t see a huge variety of animals but the big horn sheep made my weekend. The first night there were about 8 who visited the campsite right next to ours and stood majestically on the red rocks above us. The next morning there were 20 big rams wondering across from our campsite. You know me., that made the whole trip worth it.
After a good 8/10 miles of hiking over 2 days, I decided I would skip the last nights sleep over and the next days camping and head back home early. My feet, mostly my toenails were pretty sore. I’m not in the best shape and my feet were the first to tell me that. I had been pretty cold the night before and had rolled up all my bedding to make room to haul park of the group to our trial heads through out the day, and I kinda felt like i wanted to just head home. Then the guilt of leaving early and the thought that I might miss a super cool part of the trip with the hikes they were going to do the next morning stated to eat at me. I fought the internal battle over what to do all day. I finally decided I would stick it out and then decided to pray about it and felt like going home would be the best plan.
I stuck around for a while to visit around the campfire still debating but finally felt peace with just heading home. I got home and the world kind of hit me upside the head. There were some things at home that I was pretty uncomfortable with and I again started to wonder why I came back to reality instead of staying in the quiet, no cell phone service land of The Valley of Fire.
The next morning bright and early my husband got a text from our oldest asking for help. He has a friend that needed to move stuff from the middle of California back here to Utah. My husband had meetings in the morning but we loaded up and left around 1 pm and made the long journey making it back home around 6 am Monday.
I am so grateful that my husband is the kind of man that very willingly helps people in need. I’m also super grateful that I didn’t fight that feeling of coming home for longer than I did and that I was home and able to keep him company on our drive. The trip wasn’t planned or even wanted by me. However, I reminded me of what an amazing spouse I have and that I shouldn’t take that for granted. It reminded me that God has the best plans and that I just hope mine go along with His.
When life throws those curve balls, just remember: Those who can’t hit a homerun from those curveballs are often some of the greatest players of all time. So keep swinging.
