Today is a day of recovery. Although, I am not sure "recovery" is necessarily the right word. One recovers from surgery or from a broken bone... thankfully, my recovery simply requires laundry and trying to figure out how to express in words our week in Italy. I wish I could write a sonnet or paint a canvas or even sculpt clay to express the memories, emotions and snapshots of this past week. After years of dreaming about visiting this country, it is hard to believe that I have already come and gone and now I have to try to sum up a very full, one week visit to Italy.
Italia has captured me completely--heart, body, and soul. The language, the people, the land. I love it! Briefly, our trip was from Paris to Lucca, where we stayed for four nights in a bed and breakfast, taking day trips to Florence, Pisa, and Viareggio. Following our tourist days, we headed north to Milan to stay with CrossWorld missionaries and enjoyed hearing and seeing what God is doing in Italy and learning about the desperate need for workers in Milan and this northern part of the country.
Hopefully, the next few blogs will offer snapshots of the week. Summer asked me, "What was the highlight of the week?" I replied, "There are far too many." Somewhere within staying in Lucca, where my family's named from, climbing Giotto's Tower in Florence, seeing the Bell Tower of Pisa (though actually all four buildings lean), walking on the sand along the beautiful coast of the Ligurian Sea in Viareggio, Staring up into the eyes of Michaelangelo's David in the Accademia, crossing over the Arno River on the Ponte Vechio bridge, Attending a Pucchini and Mozart concert in San Giovanni in Lucca, Getting lost in the Fresco of Florence's Duomo, worshipping and praying with an Italian church in Milan, and eating gelato and good Italian home cooking is suppose to be one highlight?!!
As I have reflected on the gift of this past week, I have returned to my original theme for this blog... without reservations. However, I have found it to somehow have been reversed. I wrote of traveling and loving people "without reservations," but our week in Italy has been God's abundant blessings and grace poured out upon US without reservations.
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