My Love of the Desert

I grew up in the desert. The beautiful, dry, flat desert lands of Queen Creek, AZ. My mother and grandmother truly appreciated the views of a desert sunset, the silhouette of a Saguaro cactus, the majesty of rock cliffs, the brightness of Palo Verde trees, the hardiness of a Mesquite tree, and the miracle of Barrel cacti. I too have learned to love the desert.

Each year my family goes to the Boyce Thompson Arboretum in southeast Arizona. This year was as magical as ever. The Arboretum features hundreds of thousands of desert plants from all over the world. There was so many beautiful flowers in bloom that I felt like I was in paradise!

One of the gardens featured annual flowers. There was acres and acres of beautiful flowers. My mom and I vowed to have a garden like this one day at our house.
Bruce enjoyed the lizards and watching me get so excited about the huge rock formations. I would say "Oh, wow look at that!" He would do a little snicker and say "Oh wow!"

Autumn loved the water and beautiful flowers. She skipped along the path picking flowers and rocks up for me.

My mom saw this sign of 'Mother of Hundreds' and said "Look Tera that going to be you!"

My little brother hiked all the way to the top of those rock formations. We watched from down below enjoying the beautiful view.

The coolest part about the desert is that you can never truly appreciate it unless you have lived near it. Most people see dusty, dry, dirty dirt. Some may even wonder how you can even find beauty in such a harsh place. Especially when you are comparing it to places with lots of water and green like Oregon, Washington, or Georgia. They might question why you would want to work so hard to make plants live. But I think it is similar to the question Isaac asked me the other day. "Tera can't ya just wait until we are rich someday?"

As I thought about my answer I reflected on my visit to the desert. Why, yes, it is harder to grow things in Arizona. The seasons are different and even a bit shorter, the sun is intense, the ground rocky, and the critters scary, but what joy you can find in working so hard to make a strawberry plant produce one little strawberry. The same principle can be applied to being rich. Why, yes, it is harder to budget and plan for expenses being in the middle class, but what joy you can find in working hard to pay off a vehicle, have Christmas, or buy a bike. I am convinced that there is no way I could have a strong testimony of tithing if we were rich. How would we have seen our storehouse become full and our knowledge of self preservation increase if we had had the money to just buy it in full swoop? How would we have been so grateful if we would have never had to use our years supply to get us through a rough time? How could we have seen the Lord's hand in our life if we had not had extra side jobs to make ends meet?

Moral of the story: stay poor as long as you can stand it and watch an AZ sunset at least once a week!