Sunrise

This morning Laura and I both woke up sometime around 5 a.m. Laura, because she was so hot she felt the need to get up and take a cold shower and me, because there is definitely a mouse working very hard to create his home in the thatch roof right above my head. It's kind of distracting having images of rodents falling on your face in the middle of the night.

So, rather than stay in our room, roasting and fearing mice, we headed out to the beach. I decided to hike back up to the top of the mountain to see what I could of the sunrise through the early morning clouds. It was beautiful.

The first day that we arrived here, as Laura and I were lounging in the sand, she rolled over and asked me how one could ever describe the kind of beauty we're seeing. How do you put this kind of scenery, these kind of people and this kind of place into words? I said I didn't know.

Several years ago, I was at a place in my life in which I was really questioning God's existence. I'm not really sure why in retrospect, but I thought of it often and of Him often and I wasn't so sure I believed He was there. Then, one Sunday evening I was driving home to North Carolina after a weekend in D.C. visiting my brother with some friends. Everyone else in the car had fallen asleep and it was quiet as we drove the mountains in Virginia. The sun was setting and as we came up over one crest, the sun looked so startling in its beauty, sinking into the dark mountains that I knew then and there that I believed in God's existence. If for no other reason than the fact that every fiber of my being cried out for me to thank someone for what I was seeing.

I think that is how I would describe the beauty of this place. Every part of me wants nothing more than to praise its creator.