A lesson in being Molly

We had to say good-bye to our pet rat, Molly, about a week ago.

She had come to us in an unusual, and unexpected, way. At my work, we had rats for a couple of years, but as they died, we were having trouble replacing them, because no local pet shops sold rats anymore.

We had one rat left, and she was only a couple of months old. So the question became, what do we do with her?

One male co-worker said, "Feed her to the snakes."

Another said, "Let her go in the prairie."

I grabbed my chest, horrified. "No! I will take her home with me."

I quickly texted my husband, to make sure that was OK, and he reluctantly agreed.

Almost two years later, Molly had become a beloved pet. We spent time with her at night, letting her run around, feeding her treats, watching her share a Nylabone with Novie, giggling as she drank out of Novie's dog bowl and clicking to her and seeing her run toward us to answer our call.

Like many rats, though, she started to grow cysts. They quickly expanded, and within two weeks she could barely walk and couldn't hold her food in her little hands without tipping over. It was heart-wrenching to watch, so Nate had to put her down. Her quality of life was gone.

It was sad to clean up her area and to dismantle her cage.

To so many people, rats are gross, even domesticated rats. The typical reaction when people found out that we had a pet rat was shock, mild disgust or at least a questioning look. We knew people thought we were weird.

But to us, that gross animal was adorable. We knew her, and she loved treats, people, scratches and exploring. She was a better listener than our dog and was a pleasure to have as a pet. She just loved.

We were so much bigger than her --- she only weighed a few ounces. Yet, she trusted us completely. She would crawl into our hands when we opened her cage, because she knew that we were going to let her play and bring her goodies. She didn't care realize that she was so small and insignificant, she knew she was loved.

I think that's kind of like our relationship with God. We are flawed beings, so icky that we shouldn't be loved. We make messes. We're so small. We're truly insignificant in time.

Yet, God loves us. He cares about us. He blesses us. He picks us up, wraps his arms around us and showers us with undeserved love. He picks us to cherish, even though we don't deserve it.

We loved Molly for reasons not apparent to others. God loves us for reasons that aren't understandable.

But she was thankful for love. And we're thankful for love.

Small, insignificant and treasured. Just like a little rat.

Take a moment to learn and be thankful for it

When political conversations come up, they often become angry, harsh and leave people with bitter tastes in their mouths.

Sometimes that is because you just can't understand why the other person would think the way he or she does. However, sometimes it is because you see a rational point in the other person's argument and don't know how to respond.

Dennis Prager segmented out Republicans versus Democrats in the argument that when conservatives find something wrong in their argument, they are happy instead of angry, because they want to fix it. I would use the example that my mother-in-law posted a meme on Facebook that said Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton were in favor of 36-week abortions, which a leftist relative pointed out was a false accusation. At that point, conservatives are usually happy to take down the meme and fix it. If the opposite was the case, the expected reaction would be that leftists would instead get mad and shout back.

This is obviously a generalization on Prager's part. Not all conservatives are happy to fix mistakes, and not all leftists are angry and obnoxious about mistakes being pointed out.

I think it's better to look on this as a moral point rather than a political one. It doesn't matter what side politically you're on when you think about how you react to someone pointing out an error in your thinking.

When someone rationally says that something you thought to be true is actually incorrect, and can prove in with facts and not opinion, how do you react? Are you upset and stick to your guns, even when you realize that you are, in fact, wrong? Or are you grateful that you can now fix the error for the future.

What about when it is something you have done? When you make a mistake at work, do you own up to it and try to fix it for the future or do you get mad and try to blame what happened on circumstances or something else?

I think it's important that, as hard as it is, we all take responsibility for our beliefs, our actions, our words. When we are legitimately wrong, it's important that we are grateful to find out our faults so we can fix them and not be obstinate in our wrong-doing or wrong-believing.

If we all were a little more open to realizing that we are human and capable of wrong, our pride wouldn't get so much in the way. We could make ourselves and the world around us better if we took moments to learn instead of moments to get mad.

What do you think about?

What do you think about when there's nothing to think about?

This question came up as a part of a discussion during our church small group a few weeks ago, and the "Sunday School" answer was supposed to be God/Jesus.

When you're bored, when you're relaxed, when you're rocking in a chair on the porch or sitting around a fire --- what do you think about? Are you praising God for how awesome he is? Are you contemplating how can you make a difference in someone's life? Are you thinking about how blessed we are that Jesus died on the cross for our sins and rose again to beat death?

I doubt it.

I started contemplating the question. What do I think about when there's nothing to think about? I think about my husband. I think about my grocery list and what meals I can make next. I think about the to-do list at home. If conditions are right, usually when sitting around a fire at night, looking at the stars, I do think about how small I am and how big God is and I praise him for caring about me, even as such a small speck in the history of time and space. But for the most part, what I'm thinking about when there's nothing to think about is not about God.

Out of the fulness of the heart, the mouth speaks. I would also say, where your heart is, where your priorities are, that's where your thoughts trail to.

So, although it's not a bad thing that my mind tends to wander to my to-do list and my meal preparations, it's not necessarily where my priorities should be.

I have thought a lot about my shortcomings lately, and I have decided that I should stop trying to fix myself and fall more in love with God, and hopefully, out of the fullness of the heart my mouth will begin to speak. Hopefully, the closer to God we all become, the more we think on him, on good things, on truth, on holiness, on love. The more we fall in love with God, the more our minds will also speak where our hearts are.

Sin is like a bucket of chicken

While at a girls weekend recently, I went to my best friend's church and her pastor gave a great analogy about sin.

He said it's like going for a run carrying a bucket of chicken. You're trying to eat what you enjoy, but it's hampering your run. It's not good for you, it's difficult to do, it looks silly to those passing by. That chicken is holding you back.

So put it down. Put it down and run the race.

I thought about that picture for a minute, and it truly does look silly. I thought, "Put the chicken down and you can come back and eat it later. Focus on what you're doing."

But, how many times have I come back from a run and wanted to eat something greasy like fried chicken?

Never.

(OK, I don't run all that often either, but still, I know enough that I wouldn't want fried chicken afterward.)

That makes even more sense when you compare it to sin in our lives. We think we want something and that it's delicious and we cling to it. But if we just put it down and run the race of this life, we will soon find that we don't even want that yucky sin anymore. Suddenly it doesn't even appeal to us. We want something better, something healthy, something that is going to help us run even harder.

What bucket of chicken are you carrying? Do you realize how silly it is?

Put it down.

Run the race.

Let go of your sin, and leave it behind.

Playing in the parking lot

I spent a wonderful weekend with my college girlfriends, celebrating two new babes on the way and reminiscing about old times.

My best friend told a story about her trip to California a few weeks ago with her husband and her 2-year-old son.

She had bought her son some new sand toys, and they headed to the beach to see the Pacific Ocean for his first time.

When they got the little boy out of the car, he was so excited to use his new toys that he started to dig in the sand in the parking lot. When his parents wanted to head to the beach he said, "No, I'm digging in the sand."

She pointed and told him, "The beach is not here, it's over there. Follow me up the hill and you'll see the whole beach and the ocean. You don't want to play in the parking lot."

But he was having fun there and didn't understand that the beach would be so much better, so he refused to go with his parents.

Finally, they just picked him up and carried him to the beach, where he could dig so much deeper and had so much more fun than in the parking lot.

What a profound metaphor for our walks with Jesus.

How many times have we been content where we are, unable to move, even when we feel God prompting us to go?

"No, it's nice here. I am enjoying myself."

"But my child, I know what's over that next hill. It's wonderful. It's so much better than here. Just follow me."

"I don't want to!"

Sometimes it takes tears. Sometimes it takes God picking us up and forcing us to move. Sometimes we miss out on something that could be so much better because we just didn't want to move.

Is God telling you to leave the parking lot? Does he have something so much better over the next horizon?

Don't be afraid of what you can't see. God sees it all. He knows what he's doing.

Teton vacation: Death Canyon

Our last day of hiking started with a promise.

The place we were entering was called Death Canyon.

However, instead of it looking barren or being so tiring as to kill us, we were hoping the name for it came from the fact that it led up to our goal of Static Peak, where lightning strikes often.

We began with an ascent, followed by a descent down to Phelps Lake.

"We are going to hate going back up this on our way out," Nate commented.

Yet again, this canyon, located in the same area as our other hikes, was completely different. Instead of the evergreen forest of the day before, these evergreen trees seemed to be a part of a rainforest. Everything was damp, and the appearance of ferns made it seem even more exotic.

We were passing through an area of the trail where it opened up to a small meadow, and Nate stopped. His outstretched arm pointed to a dark spot near the trees.

A moose!

And she was nursing her baby. We knew that mama moose are considered dangerous, because they will go to great lengths to protect their calves, so we slowly backed up to keep a good distance between us.

A local couple had come up behind us, and all four of us waited while I took some shots of the moose, with the calf hidden behind her. The mama didn't seem in any rush to leave, and we weren't sure what to do. The local couple had done the Death Canyon hike before, and they said the trail curved past the moose, so we shouldn't have to get too close. We let them go ahead of us along the muddy trail, assuming they knew what they were doing.

The trail did curve, and we continued to follow it. It became steep, a rocky mass switching back and forth through the canyon, along a rushing, powerful waterfall created from all the snow that was still melting from the mountain.

After several miles of uphill, we finally made it to the main part of the canyon. A group of brown signs near a deserted cabin marked out our options. I had hoped we were close to the end at that point, but the sign pointing north read "Static Peak Divide, 4."

Four more miles.

We head into what appeared to be a more deserted trail, with most people continuing on the flat path through the canyon to a lake in the distance. Nate really wanted to attempt to summit Static Peak, and although I wasn't confident in my abilities, I started up the path. He always let me lead on uphill parts, so my shorter legs could set the pace instead of attempting to catch up with his long strides.

We passed an open valley where we lost the trail for a while, because the entire valley was filled with remnants of an avalanche. Two-foot diameter trees snapped like they were twigs. Giant evergreen branches that smelled like Christmas, because they were still freshly downed. Tree trunks strewn about like kindling. Imagine the power of snow that could have taken down such root systems.

Up and up. Up and up. Up and up.

At some point, my legs were so tired I could barely feel them. Even my arms and fingers started to tingle with the altitude and exertion.

Nate had picked a place to eat and rest, to contemplate if I could keep going up to the peak ---- "I don't think I can do it," I said, to which he responded, "That's just because you have that word 'can't' stuck in your head," to which I stubbornly responded, "OK, I'll keep going as far as I can."

However, we weren't even to our lunch spot when yet again, we hit a pass with the dreaded white stuff. It wasn't a lot of snow, and it wasn't even a wide pass, maybe 20 feet across. However, just below it, the canyon went straight downhill. It ended at the mass of broken trees at the bottom, and we knew how they had fared with the tumble downhill. There's no way our bodies would survive such a fall if it did occur.

So, disappointed, we turned back once again.

Another lunch of MREs. A trip back along familiar terrain.

We were just entering a section with boulders along a little stream, when Nate pointed out a marmot that scurried into the bushes along the trail.

"It looks so tired. I wonder if we woke it up," Nate said.

We looked around and started to see other brown masses along the rocks. One marmot was flat on its stomach, head down, eyes slightly open to look at us uncaringly. Another was on its side, obviously enjoying the sunlight that finally shone down, making the rocks shimmer after days of clouds. Another marmot was a few rocks away, sleepily looking at us.

"OK, we definitely woke that one up. Apparently it's marmot nap time," I said, and we laughed at the sight of the adorable animals.

Hours later, far downhill, we were just about back to the point where we had seen the mama moose. We were walking along one of the narrowest parts of the trail where you had to walk through a stream that branched off of the river on the other side of the evergreen trees next to us.

Some people stopped ahead of us, and we soon saw why. A cow and bull moose were walking around at the outlet of the watery trail, obviously agitated that we were blocking the only small path through the canyon.

Nate jumped up on a boulder to the left of the trail and gave me his hand, pulling me quickly up with him. Others started to follow us, and the moose looked on with annoyed eyes and bucked heads.

One man stood to the right of the path, holding a walking stick and looking like he wasn't sure why the moose weren't passing by next to him.

"They have a baby hidden nearby I'm sure," Nate said. "They just wanted to pass through the canyon. If we all get out of their way, they'll be able to pass by."

The other people still along the trail climbed up to the boulder as the bull moose ran from the meadowed area down to the trail.

The cow peaked around at us from behind some bushes, not 20 feet away.

The bull moose ended up going to the river and traipsing through the water, then stood on the other side of the path, pawing at the ground and looking at the cow. Finally, she followed suit.

"This is our chance to get out," Nate said, and we quickly scrambled down the boulder and high-tailed it out of the canyon before the moose came back to find us too close to their baby.

We entered the switchback with an overview of the lake and were in awe of the beauty of it with the sun shining. It had been a cloudy trip, one that kept us from overheating, but the photos weren't quite the same without the brilliant blue sky we knew was somewhere up there.

I clicked one last picture.

However, with the sun, the area where we knew would be humid if it ever warmed up because of all the rainforest-like damp plants, was just as we expected. The air became stifling, and we began the ascent up.

"We knew this was going to be horrible," I said, as we panted in the sunshine and humidity.

Going up after we had already made our main descent was something neither of us wanted to do. But we trekked along, and we made it before making the final descent once again to the car.

We drove out of the park for the last time and said good-bye to the Tetons.

A beautiful, serene place for a relaxing, rejuvenating vacation. And we didn't want to leave.

Teton vacation: Paintbrush Canyon

The third day of vacation, we were up as the numbers on the clock shone 5 a.m.

Nate pulled the Camaro onto the mountain pass that was shrouded in clouds, and we began our ascent. It wasn't long before we spotted something in the distance. It appeared to be a chestnut horse coming out of the woods, and it took me a second to realize that it wasn't a wild horse --- it was a moose!

When Nate had asked me what I wanted to see on vacation, I had asked him the same question back. His response was, "A moose."

We hadn't seen one during our trip to Yellowstone, and I knew that had disappointed him, but here we were, less than 12 hours later, and we had spotted his moose!

The giant creature gangled forward on impossibly long legs and hopped right over the metal railing denoting the side of the roadway.

It was only a few seconds, and it was gone, but we saw a moose!

We continued driving up the mountain, through plenty of fog, until we were high enough that the air cleared. We turned the corner where we knew Jackson Hole would lie, and yet, there was nothing.

Our eyes opened wide, and we both looked at each other with shocked expressions when, instead of a city sprawling in the distance, it appeared that an ocean was filling the plain between the mountains. A dense cloud covered the entire area, blocking out all view of civilization and spread out in a white mass, reflecting like it was waves.

Then road twisted and began its descent, and it wasn't long before we knew for certain that it wasn't an ocean covering the land but indeed clouds. I tried to open my eyes to look for wildlife on the sides of the road --- to even see the sides of the road. However, as Nate drove through the cloud, it was almost impossible to see anything that was around us. It's moments like that I'm glad that we are safely in his capable hands.

The fog began to lift as we descended, and finally broke as we reached an elevation below the cloud. What had gone from a bright sunny day on the top of the mountain turned into a dreary, dark day below the clouds.

But the dreariness didn't stop us. We strapped on our packs and headed on the trail around Leigh Lake to where we would trek into Paintbrush Canyon on our way to Holly Lake. I stopped at an opening in the trees to take a picture of the mountain in the distance reflecting off of the mirror-like water.

That's when we heard a thud next to us.

A walnut had landed on the packed earth, and we looked up into the tree as a squeak resounded. Another thud, and the rustling of leaves and some more squeaks. It was a squirrel, and he was not happy that people had invaded his territory, especially so early in the day. Apparently, he had been enjoying some breakfast when we broke the silence, and he showed us what he thought by grabbing the biggest things he could find around him --- walnuts --- and heaving them down upon us.

"We're leaving, we're leaving you little twerp," I called up to him, as he looked down upon us in disgust.

We walked over a wooden bridge spanning quietly running waters between lakes and started up this new trail, keeping an eye out for a mama moose that a sign warned us was aggressively protecting her baby in the area. We passed one couple, and then no one. Silence. Pure wild.

"It's amazing how just one canyon over, everything can look so different," I said to Nate.

The scenery was completely different from our first day of hiking. We walked along what appeared to simply be an old creek bed, wondering how full of water it got when rains came. Giant evergreen trees emerged from both sides of the path, making us feel so small in such a wild area.

Giant boulders were strewn amidst the trees, remnants of a volcanic eruption hundreds of miles away, thousands of years ago.

We marveled at the place, at the amazing waterfall that was tucked away from everything and everyone else, at the solitude, at the natural beauty, at a world so untouched.

About seven miles in of the eight mile trip to Holly Lake though, we began to see the world get white. Although we were only at about 8,500 feet in elevation and snowpack wasn't supposed to hit until 9,800 feet, this area of the canyon apparently didn't see as much sun as other areas.

The area in front of us was white, and slippery. If you took one wrong step on this packed snow and didn't have something to catch you, you were sliding right down the mountain.

Disappointed, we turned back. We had lunch along a beautiful waterfall as it began to sprinkle rain once more.

Before we left, we stopped at the visitors center. We have a tradition of purchasing only one souvenir when on vacation --- a Christmas tree ornament. That way, we don't waste money on souvenirs, and each year we get to remember our wonderful trips as we decorate the tree.

We found a wooden moose and figured since we had seen a moose that morning, it was OK to buy that ornament.

We were driving home when we confirmed we had made the right decision on the ornament. A truck in front of us put on his hazard lights and began to slow down as a mama moose and a baby decided to make the dreaded highway crossing. The truck beeped his horn, trying to warn other vehicles of their presence and the calf jumped, tripping over its long feet and over the metal railing, tumbling headfirst into the grass on the other side.

It popped up and ran after its mother, acting like its gangly legs hadn't made the crossing more awkward than it had to be.

We smiled at the poor baby moose and at our little wooden ornament that would help us remember it.

But we didn't know that our next day was to bring even better moose moments.