We Interrupt This Regularly Scheduled Program For...

LIFE!!!  That's what I am interrupting my Ruth series for!   I know at my last post I said I would be here tomorrow to continue with our story but then life happened.

 You see, my oldest is a Boy Scout and he and my sweetie, along with 48 other fathers and sons, have been planning {for months} a trip to the Northern Tier area, otherwise known as Boundary Waters.  It is a fantastic trip to the US/Canada border.  They will be on canoes {in groups of 8 or so - two dads, one guide, 5 boys} for nine days, covering about 80 miles.  They will see moose, bear, wolves - anything but another group of humans or anything man made for nearly TWO WEEKS!!!  Needless to say, this is a huge trip in many ways.  The preparation has been endless and expensive and exhausting.

 Well, wouldn't you know it, just days before they were scheduled to leave, my sweetie is moving cattle up to one of our pastures {because at this point we still had days to prepare!} and what are normally completely docile creatures, went completely rogue!!!!  He opened the trailer, they paused, then went berserk!  One jumped the pasture fence and all the others followed but just decided to bust through the fence.  You gotta love that herd mentality.  Sort of.

FOR CRYIN' OUT LOUD!!!!

 We aren't sure what sent them over the edge but we believe it might have been the presence or lingering scent of a bear or mountain lion.  There wasn't any we could see, but both have been seen near that pasture earlier this year.  Regardless, they were having nothing to do with calmly grazing like the other 150 herds we've had in that same pasture.

Todd then spent the next 72 hours, no kidding - he slept 4 of those 72 hours, trying to coax them down from the mountain and into the pasture.  He enticed them with water {they'd had none for almost 48 hours}, he bribed them with cow chow, and I think he may or may not have offered them $100 each if they would just behave as cattle should.  They were a tough sell and wanted nothing to do with it.

 Meanwhile, back at home, time's burnin.  There are no fewer than a million things that need to be done before they can depart for this trip of a lifetime and the vast majority needed my husband's participation or presence.  There was washing, labeling, and packing.  There were bills to be paid, budgets to be done and special t-shirts to be ordered and rush delivered.  There were forms to be filled out, meetings to be had and devotionals to be written for all the crews.

 It was crazy,  and the majority of that was accomplished in the wee hours of the night.  And morning.  Yep, we pulled an all-nighter.  Just like back in college.  I swore I would never do that again as I really never developed a fondness for feeling as though I had been hit by a truck, but you gotta do what you gotta do.

  

 And to top it all off, because things weren't crazy enough as we rushed out the door at 4:30 A.M.,  Todd noticed that his passport had EXPIRED 10. days. ago.  I think he thought we'd covered that a hundred times, I thought he'd checked it many times over, etc.  How did we miss that??!!  At this point, after no sleep, not one wink, we were both ready to lay on the floor kicking and screaming, wondering if they were truly meant to be on this trip.  Could anything be more difficult???

 Ready to fall apart, we just surrendered it to the Lord - what else could we do?  Just trust that He is sovereign and that what will be, will be.  The cows are still high up in the mountains, holding firm to their position.  The boys are on their way and I believe they can remedy the passport issue in Minnesota.  The bills got paid, the devotionals written and they have all they need for the next two weeks packed alongside them.  If they are missing something, they'll find a way to work it out.  After all, they are Boy Scouts, right?

So, I guess my long winded point is this:  I'll get back to my series on Ruth in a day or so when I can complete a thought and can focus my mind on something other than the craziness of the last 72 hours.

Thanks for your patience and understanding.  Oh, and if you wouldn't mind lifting a prayer for my boys, for their safety, for a great time together like they may never get again, for God to impact their lives as He never has before.  I have heard that Boundary Waters is remarkable - nothing short of amazing.  I'm praying just that over my boys.

Blessings,

Kim