February 29
Travel for me is hands down my favorite thing to do. I feel incredibly blessed and privileged every time I set foot on an airplane. My two dream jobs as a child were to be an astronaut or a travel journalist who worked for National Geographic. I still dream about the latter, so if anyone has connections with NatGeo – send them my way.
Recently, while traveling through Central America, I felt like I was living in a dream. The biodiversity was unlike anything I had ever experienced. I saw gargantuan plants growing in a rainforest, absolutely lush and thriving. I chuckled to myself because I had seen the same plants in tiny plastic pots at Home Depot a few weeks earlier barely surviving. Seeing geckos and iguanas roam through snake plants and watching beautiful butterflies float around towering monsteras felt unreal … in fact, I was waiting to be pinched by David Attenborough himself as I waded through opulent green brush high in the cloud forest as I stood awestruck absorbing all the life around me.
I find many God moments when I travel, and this most recent trip was filled with more than I can count but I wanted to share a picture of a cacao plant. I took a tour to learn about cacao and the process from bloom to chocolate bar. I learned that the cacao blossom is TINY, yet produces this huge (and heavy) pod full of seeds that later are fermented, roasted, and ground in the process to make chocolate. What amazed me about this tiny flower, is that it is pollinated by a small fly. All I could think about during the tour was how our mighty creator made this plant and fly and thank goodness for the Mayans and their discovery…dark chocolate is one of my earthly delights.
Travel expands my mind. It deepens my appreciation and awe for the world God created. I fall more in love with the world we live the further I explore it. There are mornings when I sit on my front porch with my dog and watch owls and hawks flying above and I marvel at their majestic wings as they soar through the sky with gorgeous mountains in the backdrop. More recently I was able to spend my mornings watching scarlet macaws and toucans fly and noisily wake up bright green parakeets and grackles as they flew above luscious treetops - again I sat there waiting for a pinch or narration from David
Attenborough as I felt like I was living in a tropical episode of Planet Earth. Thank you, God, for giving me this life to live. Thank you for creating such a beautiful world. Thank you for blessing me with adventures to see your creation.