Half Way Day

It's as if God has lavished on me a perfect cottage day to mark the half way point.

Today is exactly the middle of my eight weeks off. And it was everything a day on Georgian Bay is meant to be.

Summer has most certainly arrived. You can tell from the first sense of it as you wake up. I took advantage of the sun and breeze and got two loads of laundry on the line, which were fresh and dry by lunch.

Blueberries are coming! I ventured out not far from the cottage, given our bear visit earlier. Even though it's more likely we'll see him around 9 pm, I still had my air horn with me.

After the blueberries I got to work on cleaning the boat. It had collected a growth of moss in the carpet over the winter, but it honestly hasn't been dry and hot enough for enough days in a row, until now. Only got half done before the sun came up over the trees. It was hot work already.

The rest of the day I read and napped. And around 7:30 pm or so, I went out for a canoe on flat water into the gathering gold of the sunset. Perfect. And then, just for added enhancement, our loon joined me, swimming quietly off to the side of the canoe. Just the two of us, floating silently on the peace together.

Now the sun is setting with a fierce beauty on breathless water. My soul is still, like the water.

He leads me here, to restore my soul.

Half way. With such a gift of time, I find myself in that anomally of not being able to tell if it feels like months or days. How long is four weeks in the absence of life's normal measurements and markers? How long is four weeks, when you're not looking at a watch but at a stack of books you've read so far? How long is four weeks when the only meetings you've been at, have been on the end of a dock, with God, and He seems to have no pressing agenda for you but to delight in sitting with you, watching the sun go down?

At this point of turning I feel as though I am only just now evened out from the deficit with which I arrived. I have come up to zero. Now I can start to get filled.

What a gentle God we have. One of the major themes of my journalling this summer has been yet again the willingness to let go of everything I try to lay claim to and open up my hands in total surrender. I am being challenged again to recklessly follow God into a bold future. To take the risks to do whatever it takes to be all He's called me to be. He is far from finished with me, He says. There is much more to do and be and become.

I am undone with amazement. That I get to do what I get to do is more than I ever would have envisioned for myself. How could there be more?

But that's the way He works. Always completing the good work He began.

Which is what I expect will happen some more.....in the next four weeks until I'm home.
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