It was a wonderful weekend away. Capped off with just the green jacket playoff I needed.
I just had this feeling all week. I told Joe that despite our plan to drive back home on Sunday afternoon, I thought we’d be driving home late. I had this feeling about the Masters this year. I wasn’t sure who, but I just felt one of my favorites was going to be in contention for this year’s green jacket. I was right. We didn’t get home until almost midnight.
If you don’t follow golf, and you don’t know anything about Bubba Watson, his twitter caption would tell you most of what you needed to know: “Christian. Husband. Daddy. Pro Golfer. Owner of General Lee 1.” The daddy part he just added… he and his wife adopted a baby boy a few weeks ago. And yes, he owns the Dukes of Hazzard car. And if you’ve never seen the golf boys video, I’ve attached it for your viewing pleasure.
Why a sports post from a girl who isn’t incredibly sports oriented? Because I hadn’t felt that kind of excitement and hope in a while. The whole family in front of the TV. Then on the second playoff hole, he hits it into the trees, and it looks like it’s over. Everyone’s guessing the best he can do is punch it back out onto the fairway and hope for the other guy to make a mistake. But Bubba didn’t. He grabbed his club, and out of the pine needles hit a shot that magically curved right around the trees and landed perfectly on the green. It was the kind of shot the happens once in a lifetime. And it happened at the exact right time.
Bubba’s famous for getting flustered and inside his own head. Guess what, me too. Maybe that’s why I knew he could do it. It was Easter, he’s a new daddy… the stars were aligned. I cried when he won. His wife was home with the baby, but he wasn’t alone. His best friends from tour all streamed onto the green to hug him as he cried. You don’t normally see that in golf. Not when the guys have been off the course for hours and weren’t in contention. They should had been long gone. They weren’t. That’s the kind of guys we’re talking about. It says a lot about who Bubba is to.
So does his tweet from last night: To God Be The Glory!!! #Masters. And from this morning: Up early can’t sleep, don’t want to miss any part of being a dad.
I tell you this story because it was apparently a story I needed to see. It just kind of hit me in a funny way that I can’t explain. I’ve been stuck in survival mode for so long that it seems like nothing registers anymore. I haven’t felt my heart get into something for so long… I was refreshing.
So was seeing my family. I got the mom hug I needed, I got dad’s homemade pizza, and the lamb cake survived frosting without any surgery this year!
AND, I got my sister time. I pounced and woke her up every morning. We laughed a lot. We talked about memories only she and I can share. We were late for Easter on Sunday because we decided dying eggs like little kids was far more important. And it was.
I didn’t want to go home. My husband knew that. He offered to drive despite his back pain because I think he figured if I had the keys, we’d never make it out of the driveway. I didn’t want to come back. 39 days seemed too long to be comforting. I didn’t want to start missing my sister again… missing my family. It takes more than two days to get sick of each other when there’s months between visits. I wasn’t ready to go.
But we had to.
As we pulled out of the driveway I got some consolation though. A beautiful sunset that hung on for the first two hours of our drive. I believe sunsets are one of God’s ways of reminding us He’s there. There’s really no reason a sky needs to fill with beautiful color when it sets, but they’re do because He made them that way. Because He knew they’d leave us in awe, and fill us with hope. A picture won’t do it justice. But it was a final blessing on a weekend I so desperately needed.
