I was chopping celery for lunch the other day, a mundane "normal" task that I relished because of its infrequency.  I could hear the washing machine and dryer humming behind me.  As I looked out the window at the pink crape myrtle valiantly trying to bloom in this drought, I thought about some verses I recently read in Isaiah:

"...But I the Lord will answer them; I, the God of Israel, will not forsake them.  I will make rivers flow on barren heights, and springs within the valleys.  I will turn the desert into pools of water, and the parched ground into springs.  I will put in the desert the cedar and the acacia, the myrtle and the olive.  I will set pines in the wasteland, the fir and the cypress together, so that people may see and know, may consider and understand, that the hand of the Lord has done this, that the Holy One of Israel has created it." 
Isaiah 41:17-20

For me, coming back from the Solomon Islands to the States has been like moving from  parched ground into a place with pools of water.  I love the Solomon Islands, I'm so thankful that God led us to live there, and, yes, we are planning to move back next year.  I need the hard stuff to appreciate the easy stuff.  I need the reminder "that people may see and know...the hand of the Lord has done this".  As I recently told a friend, I feel like my fuel gauge has finally moved just above the big E line.  I'm so thankful that little things like washing clothes for my family, chopping celery for turkey bundles, and discovering barely blooming trees remind me that God is doing, creating, working and refilling me.