Haphazard Summer Confessions

I paint toddler toes on the back steps, because that's the rule. No nail polish in the house, even though she runs right back through when she's finished and it certainly wouldn't be the first time I notice little flecks of nail polish on the hardwood floors. But I paint toddler toes because she brings it to me and this is my job. It's small and it's silly and it's mine.

This summer has been a bit ridiculous. I haven't had time to write, but what really have I been doing? I'm thinking back on it, this first Monday after vacation. What do I have to show for it? I feel this way at the end of every summer, when the days cool off and twilight flutters down a bit earlier each evening. On paper, it seems almost sad. I've started a handful of knitting projects and have finished none, even pulling them out in frustration that they don't seem to feel right. Try a different pattern, a different yarn? Take a week, a month off? Haphazard. My work out routines have lacked my normal focus and my plans for kids and chores and summer math went out the door months ago.

But sometimes the on paper list of what (wasn't) accomplished misses the bigger picture. This summer I became best friends with my neighbors, surely a gift after so much loneliness. This summer I opened up my home to a gaggle of kids and learned to not sweat small stuff. This summer I began cautiously dreaming about the future. This summer I feel stronger and more sure of who I am and what I want than ever before.

It's something I come up against time and time again, challenging me, stretching me, strengthening me. If you're so busying convincing yourself that the small things, the things you don't understand or haven't experienced, the things that feel frivolous or excessive or trite, that these things are ridiculous - you run the risk of missing out on a divine appointment. Because God doesn't just reach us in the thunderhead moments, in some sort of magnificence that dwarfs our every day struggles. The depth and height and breadth of His miracles are always, always that they apply just as surely to the humble things of human life as they do to the majestic.

So I've done a lot of toddler toenail painting and water table filling and dancing-while-breakfast-is-cooking and a lot of talking, singing, wishing, praying. But I'll never say that those things don't have the potential to carry every bit as much weight and power as anything else I could come up with.

I know better.

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Accepting the Unknown

It's one of those hot, overcast summer days. The baby is down for a nap up in my bed. The big kids scattered here and there around the neighborhood and the littles went with my husband to pick up a pinata for a birthday celebration later on. I'm running the laundry (always) and cleaning up the kitchen for what feels like the umpteenth time today. I crack open the window above the sink, hoping for a little cross breeze.

Tomorrow my brother and his family move out of state for a medical fellowship, and just like that this blessed time is over. The time we will look back on with a special fondness. When our yards connected and our kids melded into one big pack, when we could stop in for coffee or borrow a cup of sugar. A lovely communal time that seemed like it would go on forever, even though we knew it wouldn't. It was something special, a good gift from our heavenly Father, and one we will never forget. As sad as it is to see them go and to start to navigate new changes, today all I have is gratitude...and hope.

Hope, because God does give us such good gifts. Such amazing things that stretch beyond our reasoning, things that we might not even know to ask for. My life has been sprinkled with these sparkling jewels of grace, pointing me toward a love that is so unfathomably deep, it's bottomless.

So many things, people, experiences, moments have come and gone, and I think I'm finally turning over a new leaf. For so many years, I feared the unknown. What if something bad happens? I wanted to know in advance, to prepare, to be ready to spring into action, to have a plan. What if something good happens? I didn't want to miss it, to be all set to savor and acknowledge and be all in. If I could have asked for anything, being all knowing may have been high on my list of desired traits.

 But these days, I'm seeing the wisdom God has in keeping us a little bit in the dark. Requiring us to trust Him to direct our steps. I think for a while I saw myself as kind of a co-director. Me and God, working this out together, a cooperative effort. But as these years tick on by and this life is woven one strand at a time, He's gently teaching me to relax my grip. Admit my fears, doubts and feeble human comprehension, and turn it over to Him instead.

It isn't easy. There are still those moments of sheer panic and white knuckling, those days when I feel so bogged down with the details that I can hardly stand. That's what happens when you fight the losing battle of control. You sacrifice your peace, your joy, your sanity.

God knows the desires of my heart. He knows my fears and failings, hopes and dreams better than I ever could. He loves me more than I love myself and His abundant life is just waiting for me, life a gift each morning. Because He knows it all, I don't need to. I can just live this day, this hour, these normal life moments as the mere mortal I am, trusting Him to direct the show.

Like a breeze cutting through the pressing humidity in the longest day of the year, it feels a little bit like freedom slicing right on through.

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