I have to remember that if love is coerced, it’s not really love.  It’s slavery.  It’s bondage.  It’s fake.  If I can keep that fact in front of me, it provides a needed corrective to my natural tendency.

Whenever I find myself thinking that I wish so-and-so would step up to the plate and do what they’re supposed to, I remember the time I complained to an older and wiser friend about how someone was not doing what I thought he should be doing.  In a way, I was right.  The person had an obligation to me and others in a social context he was not following through on fully.

But in a much, much bigger way I was totally wrong.

My older and wiser friend pointed this out.  She did it just with the right amount of gentle and the right amount of real.  I can’t remember what exactly her words were at this point, but if she’d been totally blunt, she could have just said this.

“Since when do you get to run his life?”

Who made me the arbiter of what another individual should be doing?  Nobody.

I have neither the right nor the privilege to do so.

Thank God, because I too want to be a free agent.

 

 

So two blogs back, I listed the top ten favorite places or memories from the recent trip we took to California, while delivering our oldest to grad school.  I knew on this trip we would head into new territory simply because while our family enjoys camping in our pop-up in the west, we have never ventured so far before (mainly because it’s a heckuva drive and requires too much vacation time).  We have camped in Texas, New Mexico, Utah, Arizona, Colorado, Wyoming and Montana, and the states you must drive through to get to these places from our home.  But we had never continued past western Wyoming.  So when we reached Salt Lake City and went, well, beyond, I knew it would be different.

However, until you’ve been there–to Nevada–to California–you can’t know how different it will be.

Some of these differences are just wonderfully striking.  California seems to be a land of extremes, all different types of biomes and so many amazing giant plants.  Then there’s the unsurpassed Yosemite Valley.  There’s no place else like it on earth.  So all of these things were glorious.

But we had all other sorts of unexpected moments.  Those of you who are well-traveled know that on any trip, alongside the wonderful memories, the beautiful places, and the great pictures, you also experience the Other Stuff.  Stuff that is bizarre–the strange–the unusual–in short, the unexpected.

Here are the highlights.

First, it is disorienting but delightful to be able to travel from one biome into a different one when traveling up and down the Coast range in California.  You are in a golden, grassy field with the wind blowing through, and thistles, and twisted trees, and then you take a winding two-lane road sharply downhill past some vineyards, and just like that, you’re in a primeval forest of giant trees.

Food was definitely less expensive than at home–I could get, say, plums, for one-third of what I’d been paying all summer.

Also, the location of the entrance doors for grocery stores in California seemed to be a secret only locals understood.  It took me a while to figure out how to get in, since the doors I always walked up to were clearly marked “exit”.

We also had various adventures that were mostly created by the challenge of having one group of people driving two vehicles cross-country.  These included our scenic tour of the Salt Lake City airport, when our intention was just to find the last gas station before the Great Salt Flats.  The airport access and apparently the entire airport were under construction and the road followed a meandering route similar to what food experiences moving through your intestines, so it took us a while to find our way back to the interstate.  I’m sure the jet-setting departees from the airport were amused to see a golden yellow Penske truck crawling through the detours, closely followed by a dirty minivan towing an old pop-up trailer.

We also took an accidental detour into a semi-truck weigh station as we approached the agriculture check after entering California.

Then, once we got back out of the line for the weigh station, I discovered that while I was doing a great job driving the moving truck, the one thing I did not actually have with me in the truck was the key for the padlock we had put on the back compartment to secure it.  The key, which yes we needed when they asked us to open the back, was conveniently located in a very safe location: the glove box of the other vehicle.

We also had the door of the pop-up camper take a ninety degree flop to the right.  This is normal protocol and would have been ideal if we were setting up camp at the time.

Instead we were hurtling downhill from Donner Pass.  But thanks to the two-way radios, the people in the moving truck were able to alert the driver of the pop-up rig before any supplies came out to decorate the shoulder.

I did not expect to spend an evening helping my son pick baby ticks off himself in Kansas.

I did not expect to have ants invade the cooler at the RV park in Sacramento West.

Or to have a man invade the bathroom at the RV park in Sacramento West.

But he wasn’t the only man I found in women’s bathrooms.  There were routinely men in the women’s bathrooms in Hodgdon Meadow campground in Yosemite.

Perhaps this was because the men’s urinal was non-functional and full the entire time we were camping there.  This may have been caused by the sheer difficulty of bringing in plumbing supplies to a location so remote.  That was another unexpected–the sheer remoteness of the places we visited in the mountains.  I had no idea looking at a map that the roads would be so winding, the elevation changes so extreme.  There was nothing remotely resembling cell reception at either park we stayed in.  In fact, even after we drove out of the redwood valley park on our way back toward San Jose and were cruising the top edges of the ridges, where you’d think there wouldn’t be any large obstacles blocking signals from cell towers, there still was no reception.

But that was actually part of the charm of the state park we enjoyed.  Portola Redwoods State Park has not yet been discovered by the masses.  They don’t give change at the gift shop, and they don’t accept outgoing mail.  It is quiet and un-busy there.  One of the most rewarding events during our stay there was that Portola has been discovered by the masses–masses of vivid yellow banana slugs.  We got to meet them and play with them on our second day after a light rain brought them out trolling the campground for treats.  So I’d have to say another unexpected thing about California was the sheer number of luscious banana slugs.

Also, we learned that a yellow jacket is strong enough to take off with a bacon bit in her mandibles.  I did not know that.

She landed on someone’s salad plate after dinner, found an abandoned bacon bit, checked it out, grasped it firmly and then to the surprise of all managed to lift off!  Sure the flight trajectory was a bit sloppy, and she buzzed my forehead as she took off, but she left with that bacon, and came back later for more.

Our campsite in Yosemite was totally unexpected.  The ranger at the check in said he wasn’t sure how we’d park our pop-up in site thirty-three but we thought he was joking–until we got to the site.  We look at it.  Silence.  Then my husband says, “I’m sorry.  I had no idea this site was like this.”  It really wasn’t his fault that it was approximately forty feet from the road to the picnic table and bear box, and downhill steeply enough all the way that, no, you really couldn’t level an RV of any kind on the provided pad.  We had to camp parallel to the road crammed in behind a large dumpster.  The compensations were that we ended up cooking outside at the table near the bear box, since that’s where all the food was anyway, it was actually quite pleasant, and we were reminded that we could survive without using the super galley kitchen inside the pop-up.

I guess I should have expected something groovy and relaxed, since we were on the beach in California, but I was not quite ready to see a naked old man dive into the freezing surf at Point Reyes.

However, as I say, this is California.

One of the last unexpected things actually happened at home.  Our pop-up has an awning we use sometimes and like most such awnings, it stores rolled up, attached to the length of the pop-up by adhesive.  When you’re driving at highway speed and it’s an unusually windy day, you will see the awning bag flop up and down when looking in the rear view mirror.  It did that all the way across Kansas (because why would it be windy in Kansas?) and I remember thinking “of course this awning is designed to handle the stress of being blown like that.”

We were unloading the supplies the day after we got back.  After taking a short break, I went back out for the remainders, to discover the entire awning lying peacefully on the doorstep of the camper.  After thousands and thousands of miles on the road during which it could have given way to bludgeon the vehicle behind us, instead it waited until we were at home to drop to the ground.

Now that’s unexpected.

 

 

 

When the standard parameters of your life are removed, you instantly realize just how vulnerable you are to the rest of reality, how vulnerable you are to the problems that those other people out there face.

The job my husband had and the income it generated were like the sun and moon to me, predictable, normal, usual, a relied upon framework for the rest of our business and our lives.  It did not occur to either one of us, for a variety of reasons which we now realize were a bit naive, that he would ever be laid off.  He was.  He was one of the people let go in a RIF last month.  If you had asked me six weeks ago what problem we might face next, being laid off would not have been on any potential list.

Getting that phone call from my husband at 8:30 on a Monday morning changed my framework.

All of a sudden we were the ones who did not have an income.  We were the ones who did not have ongoing medical coverage.  He was the one who did not have an office to go to and a routine to follow, nor a cell phone nor a laptop to transact business on.

I have had problems before, but they were other kinds of problems, chronic issues that I’d gotten used to dealing with.  When a big life stress like this one comes along, besides realizing that you are not invulnerable, you see that whatever you said you believed about the faithfulness of God suddenly becomes immensely more urgent and more practical.

We had a really great job for over twelve years.  It provided for our needs in amazing ways all that time.  It was wonderful.

But it was never guaranteed.  It didn’t belong to us any more than any thing ethereal or material belongs to us, nor could we make it keep happening.

We belong to God not the other way round.

We belong to God, and he can do what he wants with our plans and our money and our lives.  He made us and not we ourselves.

We belong to God, and he is good, and he is faithful.

I made these fish tacos the other night and wanted to share.

4 medium tilapia fillets

2 T. olive oil

3 T. lime juice

1 tsp. ground cumin

1/2 tsp. garlic powder

1/2 tsp. salt

1/4 tsp. pepper

2 T. fresh chopped cilantro

Mix the above ingredients except for the fish and then marinate the fish for several hours.  Grill fish or cook as you like until done.  Serve with the following toppings and a salsa that you like, on tortillas of your choice.  We like corn tortillas fried in coconut oil.

 

Cilantro Slaw

@ 3 cups finely chopped cabbage

3 green onions, chopped

3 T. fresh cilantro finely chopped

1 or 2 T. lime juice

Mix all ingredients.

 

Lime Cream Sauce

1 1/2 cups sour cream

2-3 T. lime juice

1 tsp. ground cumin

1/2 tsp salt

dash garlic powder

Mix all ingredients.

 

If you want things more flavorful just add the fun stuff until you reach the level of seasoning you like.  Serves four.  Enjoy!