Guess Where I Am?

The rugged coast of Maine!  I arrived here after midnight last night, and awoke to a new world. Sitting on the front porch this morning with coffee, it felt like the perfect fall morning with a continual breeze blowing through the high tree tops. Except it is August!  (I'm not in Kansas...I mean, Texas, anymore.)

My first stop was a Lobster Roll for lunch from a little take-out "joint" that has been serving big hunks of lobster meat on a toasted hot dog bun for 75 years. I decided to eat on the beach and guess what? I HAD TO GET A JACKET FROM THE CAR IT WAS SO COLD! 
This little guy was my constant companion during lunch, ever hopeful I'd drop a scrap for him. The gulls here are the size of small dogs. Makes the seagulls from back home seem lightweight. Maybe everything is not bigger in Texas!

I had to include these beautiful flowers so you can how green and vivid everything is. These were taken in alleyways like the seeds were just scattered as an afterthought. After being in record heat in Texas, in the epicenter of the drought, the cool and green are balm to my eyes and soul. (And for the winters these brave people have to endure in the northeast, they deserve all this beauty.)

As I was walking the coast, I kept thinking about the book "Sarah, Plain and Tall" by Patricia MacLachlan that I read to my class each year. (Yes, the teacher in me is ever present.) In this delightful book, Sarah is a mail order bride at the turn of the (last) century who leaves the cool, green coast of Maine for the hot, drought-stricken prairie of Kansas.  Love kept her there, far from what was comfortable and familiar. She not only adjusted, she eventually thrived.

I'm sure you have beat me to the parallel I'm making in my own life. D and I made this same trip to Maine two summers ago when we knew he was about to have his leg amputated due to complications of cancer. It was kind of our "swan song" at active vacations: a bittersweet but very precious time. We adjusted, and hopefully thrived with the physical adjustments and limitations that followed that surgery. 

I know that former time paved the way for my present journey.  I have been in the school of what the Apostle Paul calls "learning to be content in all circumstances" for many years. I know that my healing will continue in God's timing. Baby steps, big steps, steps backwards, steps forward. But there will be an end to this journey at some point. (Big accountability huddle: if I am still crying and moaning years down the road, I demand a group intervention.)

Surely  the beauty of this place will cause some healing to begin in earnest.

 That and the pound and a half lobster I had for dinner tonight in my warm jacket.