Colorado

I wrote this on the morning of June 10, 2009 and thought it would be a good start to this blog.

This is the first morning of my life that I have woken up in Colorado. Jonathon and I traveled here yesterday in search of some solitude after the worst tragedy of our lives. However, solitude was slow to present itself. We arrived at the Denver airport without a glitch, but then we got to the rental car counter only to find that they didn't have a car in the category/price range that we had reserved. We were faced with the decision to drive a minivan through the Rocky Mountains or upgrade for ten dollars a day. What a convenient way of getting people to spend more money! We felt gypped, but we upgraded for the handling ability in the mountains. Then we got in the SUV and a warning light was on indicating that the tire pressure was low. The "mechanic" aired up all four tires and sent us on our way. We drove out of the parking lot with an unsettled feeling in my stomach. We had an hour and a half drive to Estes Park where some friends of ours agreed to let us stay in their vacation home for free.
The drive was beautiful, even though the sky was overcast. The snowcapped mountains were barely visible. We didn't get lost on our journey and for that we were very thankful. We arrived at the condo only to find that we couldn't get in! The key we had was for the door but someone had locked the screen door and we didn't have that key. We were thankful for my iPhone and Jonathon's freakish memory of phone numbers.
We went to McDonald's for lunch and browsed a local shop while we waited for directions. It wasn't long before the owner of the home called us back and he had a lifeline from Alabama. His realtor still had a key to the home from when they bought it four years earlier! We were able to get into the condo and get settled. We went and bought some groceries and returned to the condo only to discover how late it was and were not interested in cooking at all. Jonathon left me to make the beds while he ran to get a pizza from the place we had just found. He returned, pulled into the garage and the front tire popped…literally. We sat down to eat, confused by all the mishaps of the day. We were thankful that the tire popped in the garage and not on the winding roads we had just traveled.
We found the number for the twenty-four hour roadside assistance and called only to find out that we would have to pay for the service! Jonathon wasn’t able to get very far with the people on the phone so I gave it a try. I yelled at the representative on the line because he kept talking over me. I was trying to explain to him that we didn’t have a lot of money because our daughter had just died and that we needed mercy in a situation that wasn’t managed very well by the company. He told me that they didn’t deal with emotion because they were running a business. I lost it! Fortunately, there was a supervisor on the line who was apparently as frustrated with the situation as I was. She very graciously said that she would have someone drive another car to us and change the tire. We were thankful that the tire popped in the garage and not on the winding roads we had just traveled. We were thankful for the manager who arranged for us to have the new car.
We waited for a while and realized that we should probably help by changing the tire. After all, the company was going above and beyond to correct their mistake of letting a defective car off the lot. We went out to the garage, found the owner’s manual and proceeded to change the tire. While Jonathon was jacking up the car, the jack broke sending the Jeep Commander crashing back to the garage floor. We were thankful that Jonathon was not under the car.
At this point we were very hopeless. We hoped that the car the man was bringing would have a jack. It did. We were thankful for the jack and thankful that the man who came with the car was gracious. He understood that we were just trying to help. We were thankful that he was willing to drive the new car to us in the dark in mountainous terrain, that he had another jack, and that the tire got changed safely. We even got the money back for the upgrade. So where do we go from here?
Hopefully, the trials have come to an end and we can be thankful for the worse tragedies that were avoided. However, we are still faced with the grief of the greatest tragedy of our lives. The death of our first born, Lydia Grace Mills, has brought darkness that we have never known as well as joy in the midst that we didn’t think was possible. So not we enter into some of the most beautiful of God’s creation for a time with the Creator Himself to grieve…