From stressed to refreshed

“Stress makes you believe everything has to happen right now. Faith reassures you that everything will happen in God's timing”.

I love this quote. After the hectic months of navigating between my different roles, I didn't know how to settle down at first. Zoom meetings and emails for Deeper Still, translating the website and the book, and preparing routes for the fruitbox-drivers were still on my plate. I felt that accomplishing all these tasks was necessary, in order to find a sense of rest. But that's not true. I'm grateful I was able to step back over the past 12 days, attending an online, inspiring conference in Phoenix for a couple of days while walking many miles along the ocean, and reset my focus, expectations and priorities.  Spending quality time with Lotte has been a joy, just relaxing and having fun. While tasks are still coming in, they no longer dictate my life; I'm walking in God's timing and experiencing rest once again.

First class AirBnB

I started writing this blog while watching the Californian sunset, from my spacious, comfortable room in this 1.1 million dollar house, close to the Pacific Ocean. Every morning I open the slide doors to my private balcony, welcoming the warm sunbeams and the cool ocean breeze. Since its wintertime, the temperature is about 16 degrees C, but the sun is warm. Elizabeth, my sweet host welcomes me every day saying: "hi my dear, how 're you doing?" or "what 've you been doing today?" She loves sharing her home with guests, she even offered me her living room to store my bike! Can you believe that? I chose not to, besides, I found out my bike had a flat tire and the handlebar got rusty so I decided to give it away. Bye bye my bike, thanks for the many good rides and memories;)

Shooting lessons

Now I'm fully adapted to the American culture: Ryan taught me shooting! That was cool. He possesses three different guns and let me try them all. He bought a few paper goals and hang them close so I couldn't miss;) There was the Glock, light to hold but with a strong recoil, then a bigger one, a .22 caliber rifle, and lastly a shotgun. Wow, that thing blew me off my shoes! The .22 caliber was easy shooting but hard to aim well. I tried to kill a hostage, holding a lady but I shot the lady three times...I'm so sorry..! :)

Ice-skating, Spike-ball and more activities

Lotte attends weekly figure ice-skating classes, and she's doing pretty well! I joined her for an hour of free skating afterward, which was a lot of fun. I also participated in her body pump class and we played spike-ball at the beach. To relax our muscles, we treated ourselves to a massage; they were sore! As a sweet treat, we visited Yoghurtland and played our favorite card game, "hands and feet," where Lotte's main goal is to beat me – she succeeded only once, though, haha. We took the dog for a walk, and when she persuaded him to go swimming, she ended up having to enter the cold water to rescue him – hilarious! On Saturday we were invited to a family party at a restaurant where Wendy and band were playing. She is acquainted with Jeff, Ryan's dad, and since her mom was from the Netherlands, she spoke Dutch quite well. She introduced us to other friends who were also able and proud to speak a little Dutch;) Later, we found out she's a worship leader in a small Filipino church. We liked to attend that church service the next day which was beautiful. They invited us to lunch, they were very hospitable and we loved spending time with them. 

Raleigh, North Carolina

This morning we had to say goodbye.. I don't like this part. I find myself torn between two worlds, wishing that Lotte and Ryan could be part of my life in the Netherlands or vice versa. I'm truly thankful for flights and finances and for time to doing these trips as well for the opportunity to enjoy the Californian life, really thankful, but being far away for the rest of the year is difficult sometimes. Currently I'm on the plane to the East Coast. Looking down, I see snow everywhere: same cold as the Netherlands.. Nevertheless, I'll be warm, attending a great conference the coming days. Just had a conversation with a couple from North Carolina and they asked me if I like pork. I said no. Well that's too bad because it seems to be all BBQ and pork there. New experiences awaiting me..:)

Next and last blog coming next week after the conference. Thanks for joining me on this trip;). Sanne returned home today, and Peter still has another 4 weeks to go in Thailand!

love, Marieke