Today was such a good day. We all need those visits to our Happy Places from time to time to renew our spirits and refresh us.

Our first stop was the Talking Turkey Stained glass studio as Mark was needing to buy more glass and this is his Happy Place. There was a new girl there today and she and I got to talking and she was one of the victims of last year’s Smoky Mountain fires. She lost everything and now lives in Wears Valley with her parents. Me being the huge Dolly Parton fan that I am asked if she was able to benefit from the Dolly aid fund and she said yes and that she went every month and got money and that she is now also going to college on a special fund provided by Dolly and is taking graphic design. I was so pleased with my Dolly as I admire her so much already but just knowing what I found out today makes her even more special to me. She is rich and famous and chooses to share her blessings with others. What a breath of fresh air!

Our second stop was my Happy Place and that is to visit Dollywood as it is October and Southern Gospel Music month where different gospel groups come there each week and sing. It is amazing! This year Dollywood had an added attraction and that was the Great Pumpkin LumiNight. The park is so pretty with all kinds of carved and decorated pumpkins and a special walk through area where you can take your family and everything is all lit up and beautiful after dark.

The man who was doing much of the beautiful carvings told us that they replace the pumpkins throughout the park with new carved ones every three to four days according to how warm the weather is. I was told that he is a featured carver on one of the food networks. His work was amazing! My favorite was the cats!

We walked throughout the park and one of the groups we heard singing today was new to us. Their names were Heart2Heart. It was just meant for us to be sitting there as one of the group members had lost her mother early one morning and her husband at mid-day on the very same day. The spokesman for the group was telling the crowd how they have watched this lady go through the very worst time of her life and they first thought that possibly things with the group would be affected and changed but the lady told them that when you don’t know what to do you just do what you know to do. Wow! that hit me like a light bulb going off in my head! That one statement is exactly what I did when our Danny died. I didn’t know what to do but I just did what I knew to do. I was floundering and I fell right into the arms of the Lord where I always run when I don’t know what to do. I trust Him and give it to Him and let Him direct me. That is all that I know to do. Wow! just Wow!…hadn’t realized what happened in my deepest, darkest valley until I heard this today.

Next as we walked around the park we passed an artist booth that Mark absolutely loves and we always end up stopping there. On this day the artist himself was not working but a lady was working for him. She helped us pick out a print and then we got into a lengthy discussion with her and her husband. They were such nice people and we felt like we had known them all of our lives. She says that she works for the artist during the Dollywood Harvest Festival each year because it is basically her Happy Place. She gets renewed by the gospel music and the atmosphere but most of all by meeting people and sharing with them as she and her husband did with us and it renews her belief that there are really good and positive people and attitudes still in the world. The recent events of worldly conflict had really taken it’s toll on her this year and coming to Dollywood had refreshed her as it did us.

As I wrote last night, I have had a couple of bad days this week when things did not go very well and I have had things happen that I did not understand but like the lady in the gospel group said, When I don’t know what to do then I do what I know to do. I know to give it over to God and let Him take care of it.

By letting it go Mark and I were able to go to our Happy Places today and enjoy and become renewed and refreshed because we have the assurance that God is going to work everything out the way that He sees fit.