My Trip to San Diego

Well, after many, many years, I finally made it back to California.  This is entirely because of my husband, Ron.  He knows how to travel.  Well, I did have a part in it--got us $600 in airline ticket vouchers.  So, with our two boys in tow, we made the trek to a land where I had always dreamed I'd live one day.

The photo is of course not San Diego, but Anza Borrego Desert.  It was so weird and cool.  Never would have gone there either if not for Ron.  Didn't think it would be worth driving two hours through the mountains... Wrong! The mountains themselves were equally fantastic.  Gigantic whitish boulders scattered over grassy hillsides, towering earthen peaks looking like enormous brown folded blankets...indescribable, really.

San Diego was also an alien world.  Hundreds of plants I had never seen before--the breeze smelling sweet with them.  Where would one even begin learning to identify all this completely unfamiliar stuff?  And of course the beach was perfection.  The continuous pulsing roar, sandy shores, waves of blues, greens, purples, luscious foamy whites....  Surfers were everywhere, even though it was in the 50's.  And I could see why--to be in those waves--almost like part of them.  It was tremendous just watching them.

We stayed in a well-furnished southwestern style townhome, which had two lovely porches overlooking the neighborhood. It was clean, comfortable, and in an interesting and convenient location.  We found plenty to do and most of it was free, or at least affordable.  (Ron made many trips to the French bakery around the corner!)   He had also rented a convertible for our stay and that was fun.  It had satellite radio so we sometimes found great songs to listen to, old breezy hippie-ish tunes from the early 70's.  Part of me started to hearken back to the old desires of my heart--to be unencumbered by all this uptightness which now pretty much fits like an old glove, or a sock, or a uniform, or a vice.

An internal struggle began to arise as I tried to fit the feelings I was having with my life as a follower of Christ--what I was soaking up from the California-ness around me, and the yearning for happiness and a carefree spirit that was welling up from deep down inside.  I knew that part of it was right and part of it was wrong.

The setting was thought provoking to say the least.  To be away from my midwestern-bent ways and to see things from another point of view was bracing.  It was extremely helpful to actually experience it--to breathe that other air. I am still taking all this in, but I think the temptation is classic: to glorify myself or to glorify Him.