Gifts of August

 Halfway through and I'm realizing again the gifts this month of August offers me.  Suspended between my July time of cottage restoration and the arrival of full-on September, August is in so many ways a buffer time.  I get home and I'm back to 'work' but it's still summer and there's this slower vibe.

What a gift.

Seems a perfect time for some important rituals and rhythms, right here, poised in between things like this.

Purging

I find myself inclined to purge during August.  This year, especially so.  Been going through closets and drawers and collections of things, weeding out the unused, damaged, or extra.  It's a wonderfully emancipating sort of thing.  De-clogs the physical space, freeing the house and my mind of all that tempts me to hoard.  Having too much stuff; what's with that?  As I empty and sort and toss, I find myself again surprised at how much I have in my life that I really have little use for; how much there is that just takes up space, serving no purpose.  And how much I am longing these days to simplify, minimize, focus.

The physical clearing spills over to my soul, I find.  I am wondering why I carry these resentments still, hidden in the back corners, taking up space I could better use for love.  Or these worries, which practically multiply themselves when they're not pulled out of forgotten places and tossed away as useless.  Which they are.

August provides me the time for purging.  A good gift.

Pacing

Calendars are a big deal for me in August.  Both at work and at home, it's a time for mapping things out in preparation for life to resume more robustly come September.  But in anticipating and even embracing the abundance of my life - wouldn't trade it for anything - there is, in August, that opportunity to remember some of the ways the calendar last year got to looking like some of my closets; too full to properly breathe.

These quieter days of August coax me toward a wiser way of being in the coming season.

Assigning Mondays as 'introvert indulgence' days, where I actually don't run errands or do anything at all that would take me away from the house.  As much as possible, at least.  Not to be rigid, but just to be mindful of the depth of my need for solitude, and to stop minimizing it, or apologizing for it, but to love myself in it, enough to respect this true part of me.

And in a similar vein, clearing off one week per month as a 'no meeting week', allowing me the time and space to think and read and envision and plan and feed my soul.  Realizing how much this is needed to balance the energies and keep me level enough to authentically love those I'm called to serve.

Pacing, yes, is such a gift.

Peace-making

This year I find myself making peace with what unfolded all last season.  Such a time of change, most of it unexpected, and a lot of it not what I would have chosen.  So I am reveling in August's opportunities to connect the two, last season and this coming one, and to let what happened be of God and all good, even in the parts I still don't understand.  I make peace with myself as I forgive myself for my failings, learning from them, let them become the strengths of what's coming.

This year, more than ever, I find I am accepting myself more thoroughly, allowing for both the strengths and weaknesses of my soul to be used by a God who overcomes it all.

And this too is a great gift.

 So August, thank you.  These still summer days out on the patio or beside the pond are rich and wonderful and life-giving, preparing me for when we're back and full out pursuing the abundance of life God delivers as we serve Him.