Magic

There is something magical about Hawaii, most especially how anyone ever found it. When I look at the back side of a globe, and I find our little speckle of dots, I'm amazed how very tiny and very far away we are.

We just spent a year in Los Angeles. Hawaii must surely be the very opposite of Los Angeles in every conceivable way. The humidity here is off the charts; I have to hang bags of Damp-Rid in the closet to keep our clothes from molding. Folks talk slowly. Perfect strangers smile at me (but not in a way that makes me wonder if I'm about to be mugged). I get tan in the shade.

Los Angeles was a gift. Teaching those incredible students, locking arms with the most dedicated on-mission teachers on the planet, having to share Matt with exactly no one -- a precious, precious year I will forever cherish (and would be grateful if I got the chance to repeat). But, lawd-a-mercy, the noise and the crowds and the concrete and the dust and the hurry-up-do-it-now pace wrung this old lady out.

Hawaii does not wear me out, except like that delightful exhaustion from spending a whole day at the beach. Hawaii wears me out in the way that a nap feels like exactly the right thing to do, the half finished novel sliding to the floor. Hawaii wakes me up in the middle of the night, coconut palms clapping in the breeze. Hawaii dances with flowers on head, hands, neck, and feet. Hawaii delights vowels and apostrophes. Hawaii breathes.

Hawaii, too, is a gift, and like Los Angeles, exactly what we need at this time.

Yesterday, I spent a few minutes on Face Time, asking my niece's daughters if they would like to come visit us in October. Olivia, whose age is far south of two digits, clasped her hands over her heart and passionately exclaimed, "Oh! I've dreamed of going to Hawaii my whole life."

Friends, come. Let this place work its magic on you.