Thawing

I am just now getting warm from taking the Young Women (and my girls) sledding this morning at 10am. At 11am, we had a blizzard, so we packed it in and had cocoa and some basketball at the church (THEY played--I just watched all day, but I still got cold). Heidi is hoarse so I can't even hear her when she cries, poor baby.

I haven't said anything about the tsunami because--well, what is there to say? I can't even get my brain around the fact that the equivalent of a major city has been washed from the face of the earth. But 3 stories really touched me this week--they made my stomach turn and my heart break, and made me THANKFUL for the squirmy, snotty baby coughing next to me every night lately.

1. The little Indonesian man who appeared from the rubble sobbing when the CNN helicopter touched down. He proceeded to walk up to a crew member and just hugged him and wept on his shoulder--"I've lost everything! Everything! My family is gone!"

2. Anderson Cooper told of a woman who comes crying back to the beach everyday to the spot where her daughter washed away from her, hoping that somehow she'll find her there or
something.

3. The Swedish woman who lost her husband, son, and mother, who said, "I will never forgive myself for letting go of my baby. All my life I will see his eyes as he floated away from me." Ugh! That wreched my gut. I know we should be grateful for our lives, but I would seriously rather have died than to live with that image in my head every day.

I am so grateful for my babies even though they make me so tired. I am so grateful that a natural disaster is so unlikely here along the rocky mountains--what a peaceful, beautiful place we have to live out our lives--the "everlasting hills."

I need to go medicate and bed down my still-sick girls. More later.