It Seems Like Paradise to Me...

...this little corner of Virginia that we call home.

Because we drove home from the airport after dark on Tuesday night (getting home around 12:30 AM), I wasn't confronted with the beauty all around us until the next morning when I woke up with sunshine splashing through my window and onto my face (the best wake-up call ever) and then got ready to drive into town for a midwife appointment, preregistration at the hospital, and a few other errands.  As I looked outside our windows and then as I drove through the countryside, I couldn't believe how GREEN everything is here.  Apparently they had some days of rain while we were gone, and everything looks fresh and lush and gorgeous.   It's amazing how quickly nature changes during this season of the year:  we were only gone a week, and in that time, leaves of trees sprang forth abundantly, new varieties of flowers started to bloom, dandelions mostly stopped blooming and left behind beautiful green expanses of lawns.  May might win the prize for the most gorgeous month around here.  Don't hold me to that statement though; after all, June is coming, and it's beautiful, too...and then after a while, the fall months come with their glorious show of colorful leaves and crisp air...there's a lot of beauty around here, and I can't narrow it down to one month!

In the mountains of Southern California that we visited this past week, the tops are covered with rocks (sometimes huge boulders that look almost unreal) and, at this season, a green fuzz as some vegetation shoots forth.  But it's mostly brown.  Here, the hills are covered with trees and pastures and GREEN.  I wouldn't be so astonished by it, except for the perspective-widening vacation we just took.

Every time we get to visit family and friends who live away from here, I rejoice to see the ways God has blessed them since we last saw them.  New houses, new cars, new children, new jobs, new swimming pools, etc.  :)  It's wonderful to see that.  However, I always come back to this: I love my life.  Even if I could, which I can't, I wouldn't want to trade my life for anyone else's.  I wouldn't want to exchange my joys for theirs--or my heartaches for theirs.  I feel so completely and lavishly blessed that I hardly know how to express it.

And so today, as I scurry around getting suitcases unpacked and the house put back in order and cleaned in preparation for some weekend guests that are arriving tomorrow and a grocery list made and some loads of laundry done, I think again of these words that have resounded within me for the past few days...

I LOVE MY LIFE!