Love, Darcy – Blackberries

As a parent, you never know where or when God is going to give you a high five. We (Tim, me, our granddaughters and their mom, Karis) were following Colt to a “super cool, newly discovered” swimming hole on Oak Creek in Sedona, AZ. In single file, we were all trailing our 6’4”, super buff trail guide as we made our way to this highly hyped, hidden spot that promised to entice the grand girls to jump into the creek and catch some crawdads. As we climbed over red rocks and around fallen trees, I was visiting with this shirtless, bronzed college age son of mine. Tim and I had arrived in Sedona one day ahead of the rest of our family and I was telling Colt that one of things we did was go to the grocery store that night to buy all of the food for our family vacation. “Mom, did you go to Safeway”? “As a matter of fact, we did.” “Did you see that they had blackberries for 99¢”? I barely got a “yes, I did” out before I fell off of the rock I was scaling. Here we were in the middle of Oak Creek Canyon and my son, who up until this point could have cared less what groceries cost, was sharing shopping tips with me. Fortunately, he was ahead of me and didn’t see the simultaneous look of shock and the wide smile that spread across my face. 99¢ blackberries are a good deal but the bigger bargain was the pay off of watching one of our kids fending for himself. It’s amazing how conscientious they become about money when they are earning it and trying to make it go as far as it can. As we arrived at our beautiful destination, I realized that I had just gotten confirmation of another destination reached along the trail of parenthood – financial responsibility. I will never eat another blackberry without smiling at this great memory. BTW: Please keep Colt in your prayers along with all of the other firemen and emergency crews who are fighting the wild fires in Arizona right now. Read more about it HERE. Thanks!