Best in 39

Ken and I arrived safely home this evening, having spent one last perfect day, slowly packing, sitting together on the deck, going for my swim (Ken spots me in the red canoe), last bits of laundry and cleaning, and enjoying the great gift that is our time away in this particular place.

For me it was a total of 37 days (with just a quick visit back for a very special wedding on July 14).  That was a good, long time.

I realize how blessed I am to have both this place, and this time away, longer than most have for holidays.  I do not, for a minute, take any of it for granted, and am deeply and ponderously grateful.

The time allows some freedoms for my mind and spirit that are not possible during my regular, abundant and responsible life at home.  To have such an extended time for meditations and rest and reading and prayer and writing it all out, longhand, in a beautiful butterfly journey (birthday gift from Kim); to sit inside the sky, it seems, and hear Him tell me that the expanse of it is how much He loves me, and to weep for the knowing of it; to laugh -- probably more than I've laughed in the past 13 years all put together.  To.....be.

But I'm ready to be back.  Looking forward to Saturday morning time with Abby and Zach, some unpacking, and sharing in a graduation celebration for two pretty spectacular people later in the afternoon.  Looking forward, oh so much, to being back at Highview on Sunday, with that family of faith who is so incredibly loyal and gracious to me.  I don't deserve them.  Can't wait to worship together.

This was my 39th year at our cottage.

I visited first as a just-turned-16-year-old who was invited to spend the week at her boyfriend's cottage with his family.  That was....a long time ago :).  And I fell in love with the place then.  I've been enjoying time at the cottage every year since then.  And every year has it's treasures, it's memories. We got married, brought the children, they grew up having summers there.  And now, as empty-nesters, sort of.  The cottage has been a holy place for a long, long time.

But, I'm thinking, this year?..... with the weather and the timing and the comings and goings, and the time spent just with that same boyfriend-turned-husband.....this year?  It was the best yet.

Dance of Delight

The Lord your God is with you
He is mighty to save
He will take great delight in you
He will quiet you with His love
He will rejoice over you with singing
Zephaniah 3:17

Oh Mighty Saving Father,

Who hands me breathless gifts I do not deserve.

I am speechless with wonder at feeling Your joyful dancing, spirit to Spirit, with me! We danced and danced, delighting in nothing more than the face and presence of each other, and the wind and the stretching clouds across the vast sky of Your love declarations.

How I revel in the song You've sung over me, Dancer of Heaven. And I say thank you, but it barely chokes out of my throat tight with adoration. And I say thank you, but it seems such a thin thread compared to the tapestry of love and cherishing You've wrapped around me.

How I delight in Your astonishing delight of me. Me? All this, and you know me! Good thing You are so mighty to save!

Dancing Saviour, I adore You.

And now, please take my hand as I step off the dock of this heaven-place and back onto the shore of my now-but-not-yet realities, for which, yes Father, for which I am also truly and deeply grateful.

I hear You singing still.
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Almost

Will there be enough peanuts? Only four more days!

Enjoying these last days on the deck.
Starting to point my heart towards home.


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The Giver

And I on shore admire this living Scripture
And adore
The Painter of this picture I adore
The gifting and the Giver

- Steve Bell
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Curiosity

In just a few hours now, Ken will arrive.

It will be starting to get dark because the sun will have officially slid behind the treeline. But the horizon will keep shouting the colours and light, as if from off stage, and that shouting will call him home to our dock.

He'll be alone, and that will be good.

A few days ago that didn't feel good, because that's when I found out that our son and his family wouldn't be joining us for the weekend afterall. And I cried a little that day. Grammas do that.

But by now I've accepted and even welcomed the extra days alone, just the two of us, as a gift, fully aware that it's the kind of gift this marriage can eagerly receive, given what it's contended with these past several years.

So.

I wait for the arrival of not just the boat, and not just my husband, but of the last curious threads of the tapestry that God's been crafting from my cottage stay this year.

And I'm so grateful. And I'm curious.

Grateful because this year, unlike so many before it, I did NOT arrive in a state of exhaustion. Not at all. It was amazing, giddy even, to begin my time with a calm and happy spirit, instead of the grumpy and/or numb self I usually bring to my first days here. What a gift to let the filling of quiet, rest and solitude pour into already existing reserves; to accept from God the lavish experience of fullness from the beginning.

Grateful because this was an all out summer, at least up to this point. I have barely been inside for five weeks now! The consistent early morning breath-snatching stillness has been unprecedented. So many mornings of unhurried time with my Bible and my journal, just me and my tea....and the beavers! Or the loon. Or the chipmunks, if they too got off to an early start.

Sunsets, likewise. Down by the water, rehearsing with Jesus all the thoughts, and ponderings of my day, of my life. Remembering again who I am, while the Shekinah proves too much to look at, but I can't help myself.

Grateful for the time Kristyn and her beyond resilient family could be here, and how the joy lingered when Abby could stay. Even though there were more Gramma tears when she left. (Truth be told, she had to leave to give the frog population a reprieve.)

Grateful for the prolonged permission to indulge in the rhythms and order in which my soul comes alive, and is most at peace, no other schedules to compete with the rituals of every day. Just being free to pace the day.

Grateful for the honour to be allowed the joyful work of study and preparing for the fall, the glorious uninterruptedness of it, the thoroughness of it.

So.

Grateful. And curious.

Because God, through the generosity of my astonishing community of faith, has still provided me with one more week. And He seems to have gone out of His way to protect it for just Ken and me. So I'm wondering, what that might mean; what 8 more days of this perfection might have hidden in it.

Open my eyes
My ears

Let me feel You on my skin
Glorious and warm and golden

I am all Yours, still
These last important, curious days.
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Curiosity

In just a few hours now, Ken will arrive.

It will be starting to get dark because the sun will have officially slid behind the treeline. But the horizon will keep shouting the colours and light, as if from off stage, and that shouting will call him home to our dock.

He'll be alone, and that will be good.

A few days ago that didn't feel good, because that's when I found out that our son and his family wouldn't be joining us for the weekend afterall. And I cried a little that day. Grammas do that.

But by now I've accepted and even welcomed the extra days alone, just the two of us, as a gift, fully aware that it's the kind of gift this marriage can eagerly receive, given what it's contended with these past several years.

So.

I wait for the arrival of not just the boat, and not just my husband, but of the last curious threads of the tapestry that God's been crafting from my cottage stay this year.

And I'm so grateful. And I'm curious.

Grateful because this year, unlike so many before it, I did NOT arrive in a state of exhaustion. Not at all. It was amazing, giddy even, to begin my time with a calm and happy spirit, instead of the grumpy and/or numb self I usually bring to my first days here. What a gift to let the filling of quiet, rest and solitude pour into already existing reserves; to accept from God the lavish experience of fullness from the beginning.

Grateful because this was an all out summer, at least up to this point. I have barely been inside for five weeks now! The consistent early morning breath-snatching stillness has been unprecedented. So many mornings of unhurried time with my Bible and my journal, just me and my tea....and the beavers! Or the loon. Or the chipmunks, if they too got off to an early start.

Sunsets, likewise. Down by the water, rehearsing with Jesus all the thoughts, and ponderings of my day, of my life. Remembering again who I am, while the Shekinah proves too much to look at, but I can't help myself.

Grateful for the time Kristyn and her beyond resilient family could be here, and how the joy lingered when Abby could stay. Even though there were more Gramma tears when she left. (Truth be told, she had to leave to give the frog population a reprieve.)

Grateful for the prolonged permission to indulge in the rhythms and order in which my soul comes alive, and is most at peace, no other schedules to compete with the rituals of every day. Just being free to pace the day.

Grateful for the honour to be allowed the joyful work of study and preparing for the fall, the glorious uninterruptedness of it, the thoroughness of it.

So.

Grateful. And curious.

Because God, through the generosity of my astonishing community of faith, has still provided me with one more week. And He seems to have gone out of His way to protect it for just Ken and me. So I'm wondering, what that might mean; what 8 more days of this perfection might have hidden in it.

Open my eyes
My ears

Let me feel You on my skin
Glorious and warm and golden

I am all Yours, still
These last important, curious days.
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Raindrop Relationships

Woke up to rain this morning, the only time since Abby arrived.

When she joined me for a pajama snuggle in the chair by the window, she apparently had already been awake for a bit, sending messages to her friends from school.

These were not text messages. She's only six. But they operated in a similar way, or so she explained to me.

"We have a secret way to send messages to each other with the raindrops. When it rains and the drops hit the window, all we have to do is write a message on the window, and they get the message when they look out their window and see that it's raining."

"Instantly?", I asked, appropriately amazed.

"Yes, instantly", she assured me, very serious. "Whatever I want to say, I just send them my message, and they get it and understand it."

"Wow", I said. "Wish I could talk to my friends like that!"

And I meant it.

With all the technogadgets we carry around with us, yes, even at the cottage, it might be tempting to think that I (and you) actually do have the means to instantly connect with friends. And I have certainly made use of these kinds of connections, yes, even at the cottage.

But I have to admit that I find this isn't all that satisfying most of the time. Technology aside, and with a little brutal honesty here, I actually find most of my important relationships to be confusing and difficult, and the pursuit of spiritual intimacy with others pragmatically impossible in any consistent kind of way.

There are moments, to be sure. Two souls fusing in a deep spiritual friendship, like David and Jonathan. Times sitting around a family dinner or a meeting table, and the synergy and ideas and love are almost tangible. Quiet moments on a deck, under the stars, declaring loyalties in the face of personal attack of one or the other. I've tasted it.

But the messages of utter respect and unconditional positive regard and "you could have my kidney" loyalty are both rare and fleeting. Sometimes you think you've got it, only to find out you were merely emotionally convenient and practically useful.

Raindrop relationships are rare. Sometimes I feel like I'm writing my messages on the windows, but my hoped for connections are as whimsical as Abby's imagination.

Maybe it's just me.

People move away and changes bring adjustments, and confessions bring harsh new realities to light, and words bring wounding and a clearer picture of what the other actually thinks about you, and..... yeah, like that.

And sometimes I wonder why any of us bother.

Thing is, we do, I mean really do, need each other. There's this deep, hard-wired longing for loving and being loved; an aching loneliness for knowing and being known. It's one of the ways we bear the image of the Triune God-Community that created us.

Somehow, I feel like I'm supposed to have this relationship thing nailed by now. But I don't.

I preach regularly about community and authenticity and a commitment to love and grace. I believe Jesus calls us to that ideal. I believe the church should be irresistable because of it. But I certainly do not have this down.

And so I will continue to pursue it, to seek to be the kind of person worth pursuing in it.

Because most of the time I'm pretty sure that it's not you, it's me.

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Jubilee Moments By The Water

in living this many years
Joy comes more invested.

Down by the water yesterday
All sunshine and wetness and frogs
I realized
Gradually
That I have been granted
A longing -
To enjoy this creation glory
With my grandchildren.

I think perhaps
I have looked forward to this one
Particular moment
For a sweet and longish time.

So happy birthday
To the mother of this
Astonishing Nature Child
Splashing on this day
Of longings fulfilled.
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What's The Opposite of Murphy's Law?

Rained today. On and off, all day.

We were out in the boat, around town in Midland, having lunch, doing errands and buying candy -- I mean, groceries. And it poured like crazy, several times.

But we didn't get wet.

Abby is with us this week. Just Abby, newly six, and Grandad and Gramma. So it only seemed fitting that we would plan for a day trip into Midland. Treat day.

And it rained, but not on us.

It was so crazy. As soon as we were inside anything - the van, the restaurant, the store - it just came down like nobody's business. Then when we were done and needed to be outside, nothing.

"Isn't that weird?" I asked Abby, the third time it happened.

"God is doing it", she replied matter of factly.
And I agreed.

To be clear, I do not hold to a theology that expects only health and prosperity -- and no rain -- for God's people. I know that suffering is as much part of the abundant life Jesus promised as is the blessings. No. I know.

And if experience wasn't enough, there's even that bit where Jesus specifically and metaphorically talks about the rain falling on the righteous and unrighteous (Matthew 5:45). So, this isn't about that.

But the uncanny way that we escaped getting really wet -- all day. Especially when you consider what that means when you're out in a boat for a good part of that -- well that just put all of us in a happy, grateful mindset today.

And it may seem overly simple but, in light of how much complaining I can do when something's NOT going my way...it's just something I wanted to acknowledge today.

Just a simple gratitude for the crazy way we stayed dry today. Didn't do a single thing to deserve it. But it was fun watching it happen like that.

Exactly the opposite of Murphy's Law, whoever that poor sod is or was.

"Give thanks to the LORD for he is good; his love endures forever." Psalm136:1
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