It’s taken me about four days to recoup my energy from our trip to Vegas. This old body just doesn’t bounce back like it used to do. Even so, I’m rather proud of myself for doing as well as I did, but I have to admit I was very grateful to take advantage of the wheelchairs in the airport and to come home to my own bed.
I’m still trying to process our flying trip to the entertainment capital of the world to visit our son’s birth mom. I’m not used to all of that glamour and bling. I’m used to wearing jeans and a nice tee or sweater to church, the fanciest place I go anymore. My needs are few these days, so all that conspicuous consumption was a bit over the top for me. But that ride through the Red Rocks National Park was something else! What a chance for God to strut his stuff. While man’s capacity to create gigantic altars for the god of wealth was awe-inspiring in its own way, it couldn’t match our Creator’s touch. How else could those hotels have had those amazing floral displays, each plant, each flower, an individual piece of art? Everything we do is simply imitation.

One of the women who pushed my wheelchair wondered what was bringing us to Vegas. We told her we were visiting our son’s birth mom, which literally made her stop pushing me for a minute. So my daughter and I told her the story of how our son found his birth mom online and how we have struck up this rich friendship. ” But weren’t you afraid he’d stop loving you after he found his real mom? She asked several times. To be truthful, being fearful or jealous never occurred to me. I am just so grateful he’s found that missing piece in his life and that the relationship has enlarged all of our lives. I knew he’d always love us, but I also knew that he’d struggled to know why she’d made the decision to put him up for adoption and a hundred other questions. And the icing on the cake? Finding her helped him find his half-brother, with whom he is slowly building a relationship!
Nothing we do is really about us. We may think it is, but life is really about the myriad ways we interact with each other, the lessons we learn, the friendships we make, the hurts that force us to grow, the disappointments that open new doors, the random acts of kindness that transform our lives.. All of us have something to give that enriches this world in which we live, and we never know how something we say or do may influence another. I’d like to think that the lovely lady who pushed my wheelchair in the Las Vegas airport was as blessed by our 20-minute encounter as we were.