Tired Of Hot

All everyone can talk about in SoCal is how hot it is...me included.  100 degrees on October 1st is just not cool...no pun intended.  I am longing for a day with no AC, as well as for the day when the $320 electric bill from last month (normally ours runs about $100.  sigh.) is just a faint memory.

Autumn...please hurry.  Please.

Yesterday morning I went on a new trail...it promised to be snake free, pretty and somewhat hilly.  I went by myself and spent 4.5 miles in deep, deep conversation with God.  I'm finding myself in an interesting place and haven't known quite how to handle it...for the first time ever, I am in a study where I am being challenged to not just defend what I believe among a group of believers but to explain the why.  It's an interesting place to be and not a very comfy place for me.  At all.  My first instinct is to just quit but I know I am supposed to be there for a reason...plus there are really yummy snacks, which I am positive God has put there to keep me going.

=0)

I also had a good long chat with Him about this houseful of mine.  When Matthew was a freshman in high school, Brian was in 1st grade and Alex was in 5th.  With the baby (Brian, I'm sorry.  If you ever read this as an adult, please know that we do see you as a 'big boy' too) now a freshman, it's so much calmer...his oldest brother is away in graduate school and Alex, though he lives here,  is working and going to school.  It's just...different.  Calmer.  Quieter. As a woman who has been called to be a homemaker, its been an adjustment.  A good one, but I find myself having lots of questions for God...the 'what now?' kind of questions.  I love how the answers come...the kind where I go home to a pile of laundry and boys that are hungry and yet another hole in a wall from a wayward basketball game that needs to be patched.

=0)

And so I hike.  And talk.  And think.  And plan.  And pray.

It's very, very therapeutic.

And I'll admit...while it's nice to be on the trail alone every once in a while, it's a smidge nicer doing it with a friend with a coffee in hand.  

=0)

My plans for tonight...look through every cookbook I own and become inspired to cook meals that come out of the oven even though I am craving bbq ribs and baked beans and corn on the cob because of this hot weather.  What is it about ribs dripping in bbq sauce?  YUM.

=0)