These summer days

How can so much living be stuffed into the days of summer? I am a suitcase bursting at the seams, a well overflowing, a garden escaping the chicken wire bounds. 

I have sat on the front porch with nineteen family members (so far), and walked the red beaches and rocked in the blue harbour. I have said my ethereal farewells to the cat that never made it home, and deloused 1.4 pounds of a fresh barn kitten. I have seen the glorious sunset spilling from the heavens over the north shore cliffs and lighting my daughter’s eyes with its secrets. We’ve danced to fiddles in the rain, and filled the house with music, and feasted on the fruits of our little land. We’ve dedicated a baby to God, and sung loudly of His faithfulness, and delighted in her perfect smiles. I have seen the fishing boats go out to meet the sun at its earliest rising and rowed under the village bridge with homemade oars. I have listened to the tales that only grandparents can tell, and embraced four generations of familial love, and received the prayer of my father’s father over my children and household. I have slept in a tent and under the thunder-drummed roof and next to a baby’s snores, and some days have woken to tired bones and headaches, but the eastern light makes shadows of the leaves on the bedroom wall and I remember to be grateful. 

This morning I hear the wind chimes singing the song of the rain to come. It’s a morning for cuddles and another cup of coffee and feeling a bit sad at the emptiness of the house. But here is still fullness of grace. Blessing upon blessing, that’s what these summer days are. 

~lg

Kitchen Sink Gratitude

Sometimes gratitude bursts upon you like a geyser in the spring floods. You're ho-humming your way through the dishes one evening, scrubbing pots and pans and thinking about the year that has been, when suddenly it all shifts into focus at the kitchen window.

The Narnian lamppost in the yard, and the two (soon to be three) rosy children who spent hours playing beneath it in the fresh snow, and the chicken dinner from your own backyard, and the husband stoking the fire the basement.

You think about the struggle and the wrestling that was, and realize how free your soapy hands now are, and how songs rise up out of dirty dishes and restless nights, and how strength has come dancing to you like hinds feet from high places. And from this vantage crest of year's end, you look down, and, like so many timeless moments before, the psalmist takes the words right out of your mouth:

"Truly, the boundary lines have fallen in pleasant places for me."

And you feel the safety and freedom of these love lines traced across your land, enclosing you in their embrace, all the while beckoning you to new heights in the center of it all.

Now even the dishwater seems to swish for joy, and the snowflakes fall like poems beyond the glass. There is nothing to do but smile wide and thank the Father of lights and keep on your grateful scrubbing.


~lg