EXHAUSTED

I got home from St. Paul today - WOW what a weekend. I'm sooooo tired!! Just totally bone-crunchingly exhausted. Thankfully, the weekend turned out much better than it started . . . .

My mom and I gleefully headed for the airport on Thurs. afternoon at 2:30 for our 3:30 p.m. flight which would arrive in Minneapolis at 6:30 which would be the perfect time to go get a yummy dinner at a fun restaurant with my sister who was patiently waiting for us there. Perfect.

However. My mom and I then proceeded to sit in the highly uneventful, very restaurantless Rapid City airport for SIX HOURS. Because Northwest Airlines is that efficient. Evidently the Mpls/St. Paul airport was operating on ONE runway for incoming flights. ONE. And apparently our little commuter flight attempting to fly in from the metropolis that is Rapid City was on the BOTTOM of air traffic control's priority list. Go figure.

Oh yeah, and Joe Biden's plane was there too. (To which I said SO?? But evidently he's important enough to shut down a chunk of the airport. Hmmph. Whatever.)

So we finally arrived in the cities at 11:00 p.m. We were so tired by this point that while on the tram to baggage claim, my mom (loudly) started a rendition of what we thought the computerized tram voice should sound like in the great state of MN - very Norwegian/Ole and Lena kinda thing - and it was hilarious. "Next stop, dat der baggage claim, you betcha!" I'm pretty sure everyone in the tram was convinced we'd had one too many onboard cocktails. (We didn't even have one, I assure you).

I fell into bed at 12:30 completely exhausted. But oh, were we in for a treat.

This was my second Women of Faith conference, and I'm now convinced I want to go EVERY year. It's such an amazing, inspiring experience - I can (and did, I guess) sit and listen for days on end to these marvelous stories of God at work in people's lives. It was AWESOME. No other word for it. Just AWESOME. And emotionally draining! Story after story after story of God's grace and love and mercy and how He orchestrates things, and lives upon lives upon lives that have been saved, transformed and renewed. We took in so much information it will be days - maybe weeks - before my head will be able to process it all. My current prayer is that God will impress upon my heart the things HE wants me to take away from this, so it will be interesting to see what I ultimately come away with. Who wants to go with me next year?!?!

More to come, but for now I'm completely wiped out. Oh, I should mention that poor Jack came down with the flu two days before I left but Mark did a fabulous job with him, Noah, AND the puppy. Thanks sweetie, for making it possible to have this weekend to grow. You're the best.

Have I mentioned I'm tired?