Tennessee thoughts (and pictures too!)

We are home. I have avoided sitting down to type for many days. My brain is too full, my body too tired, the task of chronicling our many adventures daunting. Two weeks ago, we were beginning our last week in Knoxville, savoring our time, preparing to re-enter our normal life, saying goodbye to new friends who quickly became beloved. As the rain poured down outside our townhouse, and the wind through the trees sounded more like an ocean, I decided it was time to journal. My editing bandwidth felt limited, hence the delayed posting, but here were my thoughts from Tennessee:

Wild Ponies at Grayson Highlands State Park...amazing. Best hike ever.

1. Time goes so fast. One month seems limitless, we pack in so much and are still left with unchecked items. Daily life takes much of our time no matter how simply we live.
2. We have too much stuff and we don't need much stuff. I brought less this time than I did two years ago and it was still too much. I'm overall very happy with my packing, but it goes back to how fast time goes. I'm overly optimistic about what kind of projects I can get done. My life is simpler here, yet at the same time, it's not home and that in itself adds time and stress to my daily living.
3. When you adventure as a family, you can't expect a pristine experience. I was talking to my husband last night and the best word I could think of to describe our time was “messy.” Not a bad “messy” but the kind of messy like you've thrown a kaleidoscope of paint colors at random on a big canvas. The kind of messy that is exhilarating and joyful and fun, and yet you get paint in your eyes and cannot rid the flecks from your hair and eyebrows.
4. This trip was beautiful, so very beautiful.

Beauty is not about perfect, sinless moments. It is unrealistic and inauthentic to place such expectations on myself or my family. We are all sinners journeying together. We hope to glorify and honor God in the messiness...accepting and giving grace, accepting and giving forgiveness, listening to each other with a genuine heart to hear and understand each other's hearts.

I often think of what really defines beauty. It certainly doesn't feel beautiful when frustration boils over to sharp and snappish words aimed toward your three goofy and slightly whiny kids, trying to re-learn how to be in each other's space in the backseat of our rental car.

But in those same moments, interspersed with the irritation and sharp words, we find laughter and awe and delight.

Those same goofy kids decide to play “crack the egg” as we drive a road so “swavy” (Belle's word) that my husband was getting car sick even while driving. 

We jam to country songs, oldies (which sadly are songs that my husband and I grew up on), and other random findings on the radio. The kids even roll their eyes but they also dance with us.

We pass through miles upon miles of Christmas tree farms, windows rolled down to smell the evergreen scented air. Not to be left out, our fluffy pup of a dog sticks her head out of the car window, plastering her Muppet fur against her head and sending us into cascades of laughter. 

We drive four hours just to cross a couple of state borders, eat a Skeeter-dog, and visit three reservoirs, scaling the last one in the pitch black darkness. (I personally thought we may be arrested, but I digress.) We attempt to capture and inhale the splendor of West Virginia's rolling mountains, the trees creating a landscape canopy studded with autumn vibrancy like we've never seen before.

We discover wild ponies and wild turkeys, trudge through rainy, foggy, wind-swept highlands, and walk under Smoky mountain waterfalls. (We do not however get stuck in Cades Cove Loop again. Don't get me started on that fiasco...lesson learned.)

We develop definite opinions on where to get the best burgers (Cookout or Steak n' Shake) and shakes (Cookout hands down!).

Grotto Falls, Roaring Fork Motor Trail, Great Smoky Mountains

the aftermath of the hike...

We read books together on mountain tops, in parks and forest arboretums, along the river banks, and on South Carolina beaches. We listen to The Chronicles of Narnia, Reader's Theatre versions, over hundreds of driving miles (and I try not to fall asleep...when I drive, I must have music). I believe good literature is food for the heart and soul. And stories read together are so very valuable.

So many adventures have been messy, tainted by our weaknesses and failings and yet as we mesh through the swamp of yuck, we arrive in new places, richer places, where we laugh together, eat together, talk together, just be together. It's just life. A beautiful life, messy and complicated, but oh so worth it.