Create Smiles. Create Beauty. Create Joy.
Here is where I will keep track of what beauty I create in my day so that I can remember my groove. One a day to keep the Zanex away!!

Thursday, October 9, 2008

lessons from desert landscaping

I met with my Bishop today. My beauty is the counsel that he gave me and the thoughts that it evoked. We talked about appreciating life.
Lately I have been really thinking about this life. I have told a lot pf people that I am praying for the Second Coming, and I still am but I can't keep going through this life waiting for the next. I was driving mykids to one of the many places that I drive and I passed a row of desert trees (which by the way have already been unrooted 3 or 4 times this summer because of the monsoons) and I thought "i wonder if those trees will be in the Millenium?" Random, I know, but with my qwest to find beauty I tend to have random deep thoughts. But then I had this overwhelming feeling of appreciation for this life and for this experience. I thouhgt about all of my past life experiences, for example, my study abroad in Austria...I loathed going up the 76 winding stair every morning to get to school but now those stairs are a funny memory that makes me go to a simpler and amazing experience in my life.
I wonder how many things in this life I will never be able to experience again, and how many things I will never get to learn again---this is it! This is the time to go through trials, to revel in the heat, play in the rain, appreciate the ugly, wiry desert trees. This is the time to learn all that I want to learn, to become that person that can stand before the Lord at the judgment day and tell Him all about the cool things that we did, and saw, and experienced, and then give Him an accounting of what we learned from all of that. I intend to be able to tell Him this little beauty that I learned while driving to wherever, seeing a desert tree.
My beauty today is that this life is amazing and an opportunity greater than any that I will ever have again, not because mylife is boring, but because it is the ultimate experience, the ultimate "Amazing Race"!

3 comments:

Sweating in the endless heat said...

Your insight is awesome! Thank you for sharing and putting it in perspective!! :)

Tassi Smith said...

I love that. Bethany this has been great for me to be able to read your post. Thank you.

Joel and Lisa Wagenman said...

Hey, i didn't know you were a duo blogger! This is a cool idea. I'm glad that you remembered the exact # of stairs - I thought I would never forget that #, but I actually did. Another testament that the detailed pain from hardships that we face day to day, eventually fade. Seriously, this is a cool blog sister!