South and Back

What a great weekend! :-) This last Thursday, Lynnette and I left GR early to head down to Beersheba Springs, Tennessee (between Nashville and Knoxville) for a "family" reunion. We actually took 2 days to get down there so we could visit our other grandparents on the way down, so we were actually in TN from Friday morning through Sunday morning, and it was SO good.

Strange as it may sound, the reunion was actually my dad's high school reunion. My dad grew up in Brazil and attended a really small boarding school there, and for as long as I can remember (with a few exceptions) every 2 years the alumni and their families have met at Beersheba Springs Methodist Conference Center in central Tennessee for this reunion. A lot of the people there are family -- all my aunts and uncles and cousins on my dad's side come, but everyone else are close family friends -- people my dad grew up with and whose kids are just as close to me as siblings or cousins. It was totally worth the $150 and 14 hour drive see everybody, even if only for 2 days. :-)

The conference center itself is a really neat place -- on the top of a mountain in the Appalachians, with dormitories, a gym, and a cafeteria and a beautiful lookout over the valley. It was so refreshing to be in the mountains again... It's been over 4 years since I was in the Appalachians last... Too long. For some reason it always just feels like home...

My favorite part about being there, though, besides seeing everyone, are the intense, traditional soccer and volleyball games. All these people grew up in Brazil, and so we always have several good soccer games (I think we played 4 games in 2 days. lol), and I don't know how volleyball got started, but that's pretty intense as well... SO much fun! :-D And then there are the simple things -- staying up all night with all the kids on the last night, the good talks at the lookout with people, the ABUNDANCE of sweet tea, the southern cooking, the traditional 4 square championship, and swimming at the swimming hole in the freezing creek on the side of the mountain. Good times...

It's just good to get away sometimes, and I think I really needed that. It made me thankful. But I've always known that I was thankful....but this weekend I FELT thankful...and there was so much peace... My family is SO amazing, and God has been SO faithful. And the more I've thought about it this weekend, the more I've come to see how fundamental gratitude is to living a Christ-like life. It all starts and ends with a thankful heart. If we aren't thankful, or can't find it in us to be thankful, our attitudes are already in the wrong place, and how can God's love shine through us then? So I've started taking a few minutes at the beginning of every day now, just sitting and thinking of all the ways I've been blessed and just being thankful. God is so good! And I can't think of a better way to start my day... :-)