July 4, 2012

• {dear june}

  
  
  
  days seem to flip past like book pages in the wind.
  one after the other, turning so quickly.
  old chapters ending, new ones beginning.
  and all the lines just blur right together, making up the stories of our lives.
  
  we are in full on summer mode around here.
  school officially was {finally} over last week.
  kate done grade 9. ben graduating 8th.
  we all learned much from their first year in pu..public school!!! and I’d like to share more on all that.
  but for now… for now I just want to do a happy dance that summer has arrived.
  and my dancing may not be pretty, but it sure is enthusiastic!
  
  ah. summertime just makes me breathe easier.
  do you feel that way too?
  
  and if my kids didn’t need to know things like how to divide x^5+y^5 and money wasn’t needed to live..
  I would so pack up and move to a place of perpetual sunshine and live on my blue blanket on the beach!
  
  which, by the way, if you happen to hear of any job opportunities that match that description, let me know.

  

  but though it’s here now. and we’re all dancing about and enjoying it…
  I can’t help but to think back to one gloomy, discouraging kind of day at the beginning of winter -
  when sitting around the dinner table kate declared abrubtly exactly just how many days until summer.
  she said it loudly. then sank back a bit with a shy smile at her forcefulness, I think.
  I smile back at that shy face of hers inside, just thinking of it.
  
  the next night she did the same. the declaration of how many days to go. and the next. and next.
  and. so began her official countdown to summer.
  keeping track of the days in her whimsical, unorganized way –
  on random pieces of scrap paper on the back of her bedroom door.
  
  I can’t tell you how many times that simple countdown of hers gave my heart a lift.
  when I had just put a pile of her clean laundry on her bed, and I’d be leaving her room..
  stopping, and peeking behind that door.
  standing just a moment to look. to think. to dream. to sigh.
  
  how I love her optimism. her eagerness to see the good. the hopefulness she approaches life with.

  
  
  many days. in those winter days. I needed her kind of spirit.
  times I was sure there was no such thing as green that existed under that ever growing blanket of white.
  when things just seemed too dead and gone and cold and hard.
  times when I couldn’t see how anything would grow again.
  
  and then kate and her joyful little countdown~
  
  her pieces of paper flying about on the back of her door.
  her reporter worthy announcements at the dinner table of how much longer.
  the mornings of bounding into the kitchen nearly doing a song and dance to the number of days to go… 
  
  oh, long anticipated june that held our beloved start of summer!

  
  
  
  and now. now that the month’s come and gone the waiting seemed nothing.
  the doubting it would come, silly.
  I mean, doesn’t june come every year? and summer, always the same?

  but you forget at times. even though you know. and you’ve been here before.
  you lose sight of the lesson I learned from my girl –
  
  that no matter what it might look like from the window you’re peering out of.
  no matter how totally opposite of maybe what you desire…
  of where you wish to be. or how you wish things were.
  no matter how bleak. how dark. how hard. and even dead it may seem…
  there is One that makes all things new again!
  
  and we can’t lose hope that though it doesn’t seem anything is changing.. He really is at work.
  there are things below the surface we can’t see.

  but waiting to “see”. waiting on that change to come is tough. I hate it.
  {I don’t even like standing in line at wal-mart!}
  and yet, slowly, I’m beginning to realize, and accept that it’s necessary. it’s part of the process.
  because in the waiting. in the unknown. in things out of my control. those things that seem never ending…
  what ends up changing isn’t what I expected to change.
  I find regardless of circumstances changing.. somehow.. I am.

  and so I wait in hope. trusting He has a purpose for every season.
  and His purpose is always good.
  
  ****
  
  some of our summer joy so far.. {turn off playlist at bottom if you watch}
  
  
  
  today we’re having a big 4th of july bash with some of our sweet canadian friends here.
  I told them to bring an “american” dish…
  so, one said she was bringing fried chicken, and another, angel food cake with cool whip.
  
  not sure whether those are “american” dishes or not, but this american sure likes them!!

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  it’s gonna be a good day!!

  
  ´¸.·¨) ¸.·¨)
  (¸.·´ (¸.·´ (¸.·¨¯`♥ amber

  • 10:25 am
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