Thoughts...

Thoughts while sitting in a hospital room.

Surrounded by beeping and technicolor spikes, tubes and needles, nurses with somber faces trying not to look into the family members red eyes, and lastly, the machine that is pumping precious oxygen into your lungs keeping you alive.  The up and down rhythm of this breathing machine seems too violent for your fragile little body.  Lifeless limbs, cold to the touch, warming your hands with our own when we're finally brave enough to touch.  Sitting with you in a comfortable silence while the thoughts in our head race, about the things we have yet to say and the grieving of things we should have said way before today.  Our tears fall quietly across the smiles that play on our lips, because we know if you saw them, you'd tell us to quickly not cry and "make a fuss over little 'ol me." Prays seem silly when they say, "it's just a waiting game," yet we know the Father's plan and our own are not always the same.

Something deep inside tells me not to cry, to be strong for the one beside me, while you try to fly.  Something deep inside me mourns for the children you have yet to meet, I selfishly pray for a few more years of healthy heart beats.  Something deep inside hurts and angers me, why does death always always ask such a hefty fee?

Sitting in a hospital room typing away on my mac, thinking of days I'll never get back.  Precious time spent, working to pay the rent.  Are we happy with the choices we make?  Do we spend our days "being real" or just plain fake?  Something inside tells me there's so much more than this, days spent in agony, days spent in bliss.  Ready to take the next step at any rate, not worrying about my destiny or fate.

Day 3~Mater Naturalist Conference~Nature Walk

Morning three of the Master Naturalist Conference found me waking up with the sun and flinging open my patio doors to let the unusually warm air in.  It's unusual because it's mid-November and it was a very humid 75 degrees when we usually have snow dusting the ground.  No problems here!  I jumped out of bed, checked out of the hotel, and took off on a path all on my own.  No guide to guide me, no "master naturalist" to educate me on every flora and fawna, no map to discern where I should go.  Just a path, an enthusiastic girl, and her creator.

While I was the only "traditional educator" at the conference, I was probably the only non-tree hugger hippie in attendance as well.  Don't get me wrong, I'm more than willing to throw on my tie-dye and peace sign earrings and  believe in recycling and reducing your "carbon foot-print," but more so because I'm a minimalist and hate crowded spaces rather than believing the worlds going to end because of global warming.  

Whatever your thoughts about the situation our planet finds itself in, there is one ideal I can get behind: Being a good steward.  Now depending on your business profession or faith, this word might have a different meaning.  Despite that, I think we can all agree to some extent that it simply means, the responsibility to take care of something. Now what that something may mean, may depend again on where you live, where you work, and your faith.  However, as we are all citizens of the planet earth, are we not all responsible for some type of care towards it?

I was highly convicted of three things as I walked amongst the autumn beauty:

1. I wasn't taking care of my part of the earth and reaping the benefits it could so bestow upon my family after a little digging and planting

2. My family was not receiving the benefits of exploring all of creation by a Creator we personally know.

3. A heart that cannot understand the gift of creation can not understand the gift of praise.

Day 2~Master Naturalist Conference

Friday~Spent the 70 degree day inside the beautiful Lied Lodge and wrote random thoughts as the vibrant blue sky rolled across the lifeless land.

Crispy wheat, rattling pods, velvety brown, blue blooms, iridescent beetles, compass plants pointing south east, root structured solar panels, endangered creatures flying overhead, window skimmers and ant palaces, natures building blocks called "horse hair," silver shimmers in the moon day sun, emery board plants, solider beetles, little people planters, milk weed, baseball sized wishes, 2 month field burns, a thousand leaves standing in ovation for the symphony of wings that sing.