Up the Sunbeam

-- Somehow he looked at me and still thought I could do it. Perhaps he was an angel and I was unaware. My little brother Chad and I had just entered the lodge at Cathedral Lakes Provincial Park. Since we were both visiting for the first time, we wanted a little guidance to help us decide which trail to choose for our day trip. We asked the quiet, but friendly young man who had been our driver on the 9-mile, 1-hour, 4-wheel-drive climb from the floor of the Ashnola River Valley up some 5400 feet to the lodge which sits at about 6800 feet above sea level. He told us about the popular but difficult Rim Trail, which I knew would be too hard for me right now (I have a bunch of weight to lose and a lingering problem with one foot that has kept me from doing much walking/hiking for the last few months), so we asked him for a less strenuous recommendation. He told us we could take the Glacier Lake Trail part of the way up to the Rim Trail and still get some beautiful views and that it would

-- Change is inevitable. Times change, seasons change, people change, ways of doing things change, we change. Many changes are good ones as we constantly try to improve our way of life, and the desire for change is what lies at the root of countless innovations and brilliant ideas. Change can be a good thing, but change can also be dizzying, frightening and unsettling, even dangerous. Sometimes in the midst of so much that is changeable, we really need to have some things that never change. It had been five LOOOOONNNGGGG years since I had been home to British Columbia--the longest I've ever been away. I knew about some of the things that have changed in that time--the high school I graduated from has almost completely been replaced with shiny new buildings--I didn't even have the heart to ask Daddy to drive down Main Street to see it. I loved it the way it was. Out on the wide open Indian Reserve I used to know as untouched grassland where I spent untold thousands of happy

-- I've been away. I've been away, and I've been wondering how I would wrap words around where I've been and what I've seen, and how I could possibly hope to write down this heart-full of wonder I've brought back with me. It sounds a cliche, but I truly don't know where to begin . . . there's so much . . . What began as a phone call a few months ago, offering me a gift of thoughtfulness in proportions I cannot describe, has just culminated in a week I will never forget! This gift . . . 7 days in the mountains to breathe . . . to revive . . . to refresh . . . and to take pictures to my heart's content . . . Oh! Such a gift!!! Maybe for the first time since I was their only child (my first six years), it was just me, my mom and dad, and the mountains we all are crazy about!! For this country/mountain girl living her life in the city, I couldn't have asked for anything more!! Before I left, as excited as I was (I was VERY excited), the th

-- It's my birthday today. Two years ago, I wrote a birthday contemplation about peeling away the old to reveal the growth underneath.  I looked to the manzanita tree to visualize the process of becoming . Time went by. Ten months ago I wrote about how I was Thinking About Thinking , and praying for God to continuously untangle me from the sometimes unintentional, but destructive thinking that was determining my actions.  Time went by. At the beginning of 2011 I wrote reluctantly about my struggle with my weight and my desire to see God's strength victorious in the place of my greatest weakness and failure.  I discovered my need for a new perspective and a good attitude toward a life-long problem.  Time went by. A little over four months ago I wrote about a bizarre encounter  that held up a mirror to my heart. That mirror shockingly revealed the truth, I was my own mean girl! From the moment I realized I was actually mistreating  an Image-bearer, I stopped (read