Walking Up The Mountain

This past weekend was just the escape that I needed (yes, I'm using the word "escape" literally... things are pretty tense and weird here so any time away from Brenton is a mini-vacation). I got to share Saturday evening with one of my favorite families here and spent most of the time playing with the little girls and the baby: just being with our families is a good escape from the craziness that is our job.

Sunday started out with not one but TWO turtle saves. And Mary did them in her church dress! 

After going to church in Pineville, where we heard a pretty intense sermon, we left for our weekend backpacking trip in Northern West Virginia. For our VIPP program we got stamps at Blackwater Falls and Canaan Valley State Parks and drove to Dolly Sods Wilderness Area. We hiked the relatively easy three miles to our campsite (a spot called "Un-named Vista") and was immediately confronted with some intense God time. I find it really hard not to see God when I look at mountains, particularly ones that are so awesome and, just, there in front of us. We set up camp, watched an amazing sunset, cooked some soup, went to bed, dreamed about attacks by bears and the guys from Duck Dynasty, woke up, and enjoyed some tea in front of this:

Incredible, right? We felt pretty blessed by the view, the privacy, and the chance to be out in God's amazing creation on our day off. Sitting there on the ledge the song "I Could Sing of Your Love Forever" popped into my head and I couldn't stop singing it.

Over the mountains and the sea,

Your river runs with love for me,

and I will open up my heart

and let the healer set me free.

I'm happy to be in the truth

so I will daily lift my hands

and I will always sing of 

when your love came down.

It was an interesting God moment that I've never really experienced before--having a song get stuck in my head that had some pretty meaningful words about my faith. Daily lift my hands? Yeah, still gotta work on that one, even though I am getting better at praying! But I have been experiencing how having an open heart can set you free. 

After packing up and hiking back to the car, we drove to Spruce Knob, the point of highest elevation in the state at 4863 ft. It was also a great view, but there was something really special about our backpacking site that was only accessible by hiking that made Spruce Knob feel a little less important.

This short trip got me really excited for next June when my dad and I will be spending some time backpacking in Rocky Mountain National Park. The girls and I are planning to do more trips with longer hikes and more weight in our packs so I'm hoping that I'll feel even more prepared for the big adventure with my dad. 

Speaking of that really great guy who raised me: he's got this cool attitude toward life where he's just positive all the time (aka "The Life Skill of Positivity"). I hope he isn't mad that I'm sharing his secret, but he likes to use "life carrots" (trips, vacations, really anything you're looking forward to) to get through some of the more stressful times. I told my staff about this as we're struggling with some of that stress and tension now and we've been adding carrots to our schedule like crazy. 

Example:

Carrot #1: tomorrow morning is French Toast Casserole for breakfast

Also, FYI Michigan folks, carrot #3 is my return to the mitten state in just 3 days! I'm expecting to make trips to the beach, the zoo, Bell's, and my backyard with my puppy, so let me know if you're trying to be a part of that.

Hey God It's Me, Carly....sooooo, yeah.

So there's this part of working in ministry where you have to pray in front of people a lot. This is something that I am terrible at doing. Here are some of the better examples:

(Oh, and all of these happened in front of large groups of volunteers)

"...please bless us with open hearts, open minds, and....open hearts...uhhh [awkward pause] wellp, DOUBLE OPEN HEARTS, I guess!"

"Hey God...sooo, what's up?"

"...and thank you for the sunshine, it's really great, we like it. Well I guess also the rain is good 'cause you need it for all your trees and, er, stuff.."

"...please bless the breakfast that was prepared for us. Man, I'm really excited for this french toast. [Realize I said this out loud. Cringe. Decide to go with it.] Sugar is great, so...good job God."

"...and also... [way longer than awkward pause]...uhhh okayyeahamen."

Moral of the story, I'm really, really bad at praying out loud. So bad that now it's actually easy for me because it's kind of a joke and at least I end up making people laugh. Usually I just do my awkward prayer thing and then moonwalk out of the room while people start eating or doing whatever volunteers do.

This week I was sure that the end of my prayer to close orientation (the last one in the list above) made more than one person uncomfortable. But, the next morning one of the volunteers came up to me and said that he has always been afraid to pray in public because he knew he would go blank and not know what to say. He told me that hearing that happen to me was great for him because he realized that it's just about whatever God has planned on your heart to say, and when He's done, you're done.

It's cool because then I'm just weird enough during a prayer that people think "hey, I could probably do that in a way that won't make people want to hide because they feel so strange and non-traditional while listening to this prayer" and then maybe some people will decide to pray because now it's way less pressure. Thinking about it now, I kind of wish that I had been around worse pray-ers when I was younger so that it didn't take me so long to be OK with my own casual way of praying. We're reading a book by Parker Palmer called "Let Your Life Speak." He talks a lot about how to find yourself and has this interesting idea that we should "embrace what we dislike or find shameful about ourselves as well as what we are confident and proud of." Touché, Parker. Watch me embrace my social prayer anxiety and awkwardness. (Here my inner cheerleader interjects with an eloquent "GO 'HEAD! GO 'HEAD GURL!" that we recently heard from a young man, who was not the father, on the Maury show.)

Carly Wheaton: setting the bar low for prayer skills since 2013.

High-five for spiritual leadership!

What Are This?

For those of you who believe that the only thing I do at work is play with puppies, I am about to prove you wrong because I also...

-Eat lots of snacks

-Do my best to be like Jesus

-Read in hammocks by the river

-Drive our families' ATVs around the woods

This.

So this happened a few days ago...

...after a lot of paperwork and phone calls and meetings and discussing and praying, one of our families, RT, got running water in her home for the first time since 1997. For fifteen years she caught rainwater to flush toilets and to do dishes and carried jugs of spring water to the house to drink. Remembering how difficult the few days during Hurricane Sandy that we didn't have running water were, I can't even imagine being without such a basic thing for a time equivalent to 3/4 of my life.

This project started with a small thought of "I don't think anyone should be without running water" and then turned into this real...thing. The effect that ASP has on people has been clear to me for quite a long time, but this just feels like a really big deal, and I'm proud to have been a part of it. Okay, so by "part of it" I actually mean "I pretty much did all of the work for it".. it was my "baby" project for so long that now I am FULL of astonishment that it's actually all complete and that this could even be possible. Done with the selfish excitement now, sorry! (But only kind of done, I've been shouting from the mountains about it these past few days and will probably continue.)

Talking with R just hours after she got her water turned on was amazing. I am so blessed to be the hands and feet of a God who is giving us these dreams and these volunteers and changing all these lives. I don't know that I'll ever fully know and understand His love, but I'm pretty sure I saw a little bit of it in R's face when she turned away from me, tears in her eyes, overwhelmed by all that we were doing. And then again when she turned back for one of the most sincere hugs I've ever received.

In sum, I have a full heart.

Now just gotta work on my eyes because as we all know: "Clear eyes, full hearts, can't lose." Thank you, Coach Taylor. Updates soon.


"But whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water up to eternal life." John 4:14