"Country Roads, Take me Home"

Hello my peeps.  Sorry for the lack of blogging lately....Ive been on the road a lot lately and just plain busy with work and life.



Two weekends ago I spent the weekend in West Virginia visiting my aunts and cousins. Its not a trip I make as frequently as I should but its always a wonderful and "soul cleansing" vist. WV is my foundation...the opening chapters of my life. I was born in a small town in between Beckley and Charleston...my parents were childhood sweethearts who grew up two doors down from each other. When I was 4 my Dad joined the Navy and we moved to San Deigo but my foundation had been laid. It was foundation of spending summer evenings chasing "lightening bugs" while the grownups drank sweet tea out of mason jars on the porch, before mason jars were dubbed "redneck wine glasses" It was a foundation of Sunday service followed by dinners at my Great Mamaw Renes where all the men sat watching football while the women sat in the kitchen cooking and gossiping......a foundation of swimming in rivers and being petrified as my uncle told tales of catfish big enough to swallow a volkswagon beetle (SERIOUSLY...I believed him)



Kanawha River



Gorgeous Fall Sunrise off Midway Trail


 

I could go on for hours, the first memories of my life in that small town are some of my most cherished. Even throughout all the moving as a Naval family I spent almost every summer of my childhood in WV literatly walking from one grandmothers house to another. As I've gotten older.....I've lost a lot of those family members that played so much into those memories...but those memories are precious and in keeping them it honors my family members that have gone home to the Lord.   Life keeps me from going up to WV as much as I did as child but I try to get up there twice a year.   Say what you wil and insert cliche WV "married to my cousin" joke here......it really is a beautiful place.  Enjoy the view...I grew up with them!










 


Last weekend we went to HowlOScream atBusch Gardens with our best friends Dan and Emily. We were beyond thrilled when the Frezzas joined us here in Virginia and love having them right up the road in Williamsburg. Jonathan, Dan and Emily have all been friends since their freshman year at Western Carolina Universtiy (before Jonathan and Em transferred to ECU) When Jonathan and I started dating I knew that Dan and Emily's approval of me was very important to Jonathan....they are like family to him and have become that way to me as well.....I passed!!!  We always have a good time together and HowloScream was no different.  The lines were awful of course but the rides and hautned houses were outstanding!



 Last week was diffcult on the "baby front"  A friend of mine had a miscarriage.  Under normal circumstances that would be sad but I find it even more difficult knowing and sharing her desire for a baby.  My heart is broken for her and I can empathasize with her pain.  When you are trying to have a baby it seems like everyone around you gets pregnant with no problem and has the easiest most complication free pregnancy ever and then something like this happens and shakes you to the core.  I have been in deep prayer and fasting for healing for her heart and body.  I  know that whatever God has in store for her, myself and any woman who's hearts desire is to become a mother is His plan.....even if we can't understand it His will above all else.

Psalm 139:13

For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.