Flying to the OC Again...

     So today, hubby and I boarded a plane headed to the west coast.  Southern California is my third favorite place on earth (first favorite place being home, second being Africa).  I love California and have learned so much from the funky state.....lessons coming from both the southern and northern parts of the state.  Some I love to share and others I am not quite willing to share.        I love to visit Cali, but must admit I was not excited about this trip.  Having just completed my first school year as a full-time working Momma, I long to spend endless days with my babies.  I want to snuggle on the couch and sit poolside listening to their laughter (& screams while fighting....just keeping it real), but I know that all will be waiting for me at the end of this week.  For now, I will embrace this trip.  Time, as my brother so thoughtfully reminded me, to reconnect with my spouse and rejuvenate after a difficult year.  My hubby just said he wondered yesterday if I was going to make the trip and had even suggested I apply an additional estrogen patch to help me calm my emotions.        Thankfully I swallowed my uneasiness and boarded the plane.  As I engulfed my thoughts in a book written by the author of my favorite blog, I have already found purpose in this trip.  You see she is this amazing mom who always reminds me to find beauty in the unexpected.  As I read about her journey of growing to love the imperfect (not as if any of us are even remotely close to perfection), I remember my first trip to California.  18 years old, fresh out of my freshman year of college, and ready to conquer the world one mission trip at a time.  At orientation the leaders tried to instill in us our purpose of "spreading the Baptist spirit"...for real!  Not the  love of Jesus, who loved everyone, especially the dirty, hopeless, sinners,  but the spirit of a religion that taught me to judge others for their actions, as if my sins were so much less wrong than theirs.          Thankfully, however,the churches I worked with in Orange County that summer taught me about sharing Jesus with others by learning to love like Jesus.  Loving the homeless man while remembering that I was a sinner just like him but he was the unlucky one whose sins landed him jobless, alone, and hungry.  Loving the ghetto kid who fights because he doesn't know any other way and remembering that all he, just like all of us, needs is someone to believe in him and his ability to overcome.  Loving the addict who deals with the cruel disease of addiction that robs one of life just like cancer does but often doing so without community and facing it all alone because they are seen as weaker than a patient fighting cancer.        That summer, 15 years ago, changed me.  I returned to Tennessee with a totally new understanding of religion and life (and deadset on never being a "Southern Baptist" again). It was a defining point in helping me find my purpose and my place in life.  The unexpected beauty I found that summer in learning to embrace differences and not judge others, gave me the freedom that I would need to step out and do bold things God would later call me to.  I am forever grateful for California and all that it has taught me in life and am thankful to be getting away for a week of rejuvenation.  I can already feel refreshing sense of renewal wash over me.  I needed this week and I know I will be a better momma, wife, daughter, sister, friend, and counselor because of it...