i got back from a long weekend in utah about an hour and a half ago. i am terribly tired but i'm still on mountain time so i can't quite go to sleep. so i'm here. and i'm about to tell you about my weekend.
planes:
i love southwest. only problem is cincinnati nor dayton have it. so i had to drive to indianapolis. which was kind of far but worth the money save. first flight on friday - totally packed and the guy next to me was not an armrest sharer. but i did get a window seat. second flight on friday - a 4 year old that screamed the entire time. the. entire. time. first flight today - i had a row alone and it was peaceful and got to read. second flight today - totally packed and i had a middle seat in a row. FAIL. and there were 7, yes 7 infants on the plane including newborn twins. shoot me now. i know what you might be thinking - "have some compassion for their parents!" no. i will not. get in your car and drive. if they can kick an obese person off of a plane for taking up too much room then i think they should kick off the babies for driving me crazy. oh and sidenote: i haven't flown alone in a few years. totally forgot how hard it is to not have someone talk me through the take offs and landings, especially the landings. i do not handle either well. i think i scared the guy next to me on the first flight. serves him right for taking my armrest.
faith:
i didn't go into this trip thinking i would learn anything about my faith, be challenged about my faith, or to be completely honest, even really discuss faith. i think it was a mixture of being in SLC where i think there is an inclination to discuss religion anyway and the fact that a few of the people i spent the weekend with seem to be going through a bit of a faith revival. friday night, we talked about faith 2 or 3 different times. saturday, it came up more than once. including a conversation i had with jonathan's friend jessica. {sidenote: his friends jake and jess are a couple that live 2 doors down that i wish lived in cincinnati because i would so be their friend. and his friend ben. they are dope. that is all.} she was telling me about the way her faith has changed recently. we were talking about easter and the cross and standing in jonathan's kitchen surrounded by a bunch of people laughing and carrying on, she started to cry. it was so honest. it actually convicted me. my faith has not been the most important thing in a long time {honesty talk}. but i told jon the next morning that if i could talk about the cross without crying or feeling those emotions, that something was seriously wrong. holy week is always a tough one for me. but similar to this year, there have been years before where i had drifted "away" and this easter time brought me back. it's what my faith is based on, it makes sense that it would. i woke up sunday morning and i had a song in my head. "if ever i loved thee, my Jesus tis now" and i knew that morning i had a sensitive spirit. we went to jonathan's church and they sang songs about the cross. the verse in 'how great thou art' started about Jesus' death on the cross and my eyes immediately filled up. i love it. when the writer thought about God giving Jesus to die on the cross, he said he "scarce could take it in". i get that. it's overwhelming. on my drive back to cincinnati from indy tonight, i was singing another song about the cross. in a verse where God is talking to Jesus on the cross he says "...but soon i will clothe you in robes of my own. Jesus, this hurts me much more than you know..." and i started crying. it's incredible to me the way that God works. and for me, i went across the country for vacation and got a wake up call i needed from people that were just sharing with me what was going on in their lives. if you didn't know, i serve an incredible God.
bacon wrapped meatloaf:
i kind of fell in love with salt lake city...and it's food. i had been there once before and done the touristy things. they were great and all but this time i just wanted to hang out with jonathan. friday night we went to dinner {i had a black bean and goat cheese quesadilla. mmm} and then out with his friends. it was a good time. i knew i would wake up earlier than him saturday so i planned to go for a jog. well. i was gone for 2.5 hours. i decided to run to temple square. then i decided to run to jamba juice which was way further than i thought {but totally worth it}. i explored downtown a bit. i could feel the blisters starting and i hadn't even started back to his house yet so i walked a lot of the way home. according to my iphone odometer, i did almost 7 miles. it was beautiful. a cool morning with crazy beautiful mountains and an awesome downtown district. i could move there. we went to lunch at a little cafe that was very good and took home tiramisu for later {yum!} i took an almost 3 hour nap {if you know me, this is rare} and then we went to dinner with jake and jess. we had a vegetarian lasagna pizza at a local pizza place that was delish! we went back to jonathan's and lots of people came over. sunday we went to church and then to brunch with some of his friends. {mimosas and bloody marys, thank you very much} then we had the most perfect sunday afternoon sitting in backyard chairs while the boys threw a frisbee.
this is when the magic happened.
we didn't know where to go to dinner. they threw around some ideas and finally picked a place that no one had eaten dinner at before. turns out it was southern cuisine. and i have to admit now that the best southern food i've ever eaten was in downtown salt lake city. it's true. i had blackened catfish with yummy hush puppies, everyone else had crazy good food but i'm pretty sure his friend ben won the prize. now, i didn't try it because i don't eat beef or pork but apparently it was a gift directly from God. yes, it was bacon wrapped meatloaf with country gravy on top. with killer mashed potatoes and DELISH mac and cheese {i did try that}. then we took home peach cobbler, apple brown betty, and banana pudding. and gained 6.7 pounds each. totally worth it.
so that was my weekend. i ate a lot. but that's what vacations are for, right? i got to spend time with one of my favorite humans and meet the people that mean the most to him and totally understand why they do. i got to see landscape that i'm not used to and it was breathtaking. i got to learn about myself unexpectedly. i got to travel which i love. i got to relax. all in all, it was a fantastic weekend.
i consider myself very fortunate. this morning i felt the same way that i used to feel when i would leave college to go home or vice versa. sad to leave, happy to go. i love my life here. but i could see myself in a town like salt lake.
who knows, i'm only 25. maybe i'll never leave cincinnati or maybe i'll live in 12 places in the next 15 years. but for now, i'll just go to bed.
xx
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