Our view has changed

And so the sun has set on our '08 Lake Michigan vacation.

We're home at last after 2 full days of driving. Rick has the car unloaded--now for the unpacking!

I'm exhausted, but I wanted to share this.

Yesterday was a very long day in the car, and we really pushed to get to Omaha where we had reservations, so we'd have a shorter day today (it's a 1300 mile trip in all from the cottage to our house in Denver). We were driving through western Iowa after dark, still about 120 miles from Omaha, and started seeing a HUGE thunderstorm ahead in exactly the direction we were going. It was really magnificent, with giant bolts of lightning--sometimes they looked bundled with a half dozen or more hitting at the same time close to the same spot--never seen anything quite like it. It lit the whole sky, from south to north about as far as we could see.

While my enlightened self was enjoying the majesty of it, my animal body and worry-wort ego-mind were getting very, very tense as we were headed directly into it. I had to force myself to stop imagining tornadoes, etc. To top it off, we were in a dicey construction zone with 6 lanes winnowed down to 2, and with 2-way traffic, complete with tight barricades, big trucks, etc. and heavy rain, I decided to try gratitude and appreciation--for the storm, for our safety, etc., and that helped greatly, but that ol' reptilian brain just kept giving the danger signal. Soon, though I wanted to be, I was not in Easy World anymore!

Just as I could feel myself really starting to clench up again in fear, we passed an elegant billboard (is that an oxymoron?!) with a photo of a butterfly on it that simply said, "Watch the magic unfold!" with some small words at the bottom. It was advertising the new butterfly exhibit at the Omaha zoo. How perfect!

In case you don't remember, the tag line for Easy World, after "I choose to live in Easy World where everything is easy," is "breathe...relax...allow...enjoy...and watch the magic unfold!" So that's what I did, and not too long afterward, I-80 veered south a bit and we left the storm, which by this time, was moving north, behind, having only encountered some very brief periods of hard rain to go along with the spectacular light show.

Then, today, we passed a flatbed truck trailer carrying dozens of huge spools of something and each one was labeled in large letters with the word "Spirit!"  Loved that!

A blessed trip, indeed.

Here is what was waiting when we got home--our Sweet Autumn Clematis (on the arbor) at its peak of beauty. It's not a Lake Michigan sunset, but we enjoyed kicking back on the patio and admiring its beauty when we got home: