Summer School

I saw the school bus picking up some neighbor kids last week.  There are leaves on our maple tree that are turning yellow.  Summer is almost over, and I hate to see it end.  This has been a summer of growth and dreams and so much beauty.  It’s also been a summer of learning.  These are just a few of the lessons I learned this summer:

Be more like Mom.  I feel like I’ve gotten to go to the School of Mom this summer.  She and I started walking together in the mornings at the beginning of summer, and I have learned so much from and about her.  For starters, I learned how very, very different we are.  Mom adores Hallmark movies.  I can’t get enough of Stephen King.  Mom sees birds in the treetops.  I see vultures and wonder if they’re harbingers of doom.  (she actually smacked me for saying that.)  Mom is disciplined.  She gets up every single morning and studies her Bible, prays, exercises, and plans her day.  She arrives at my house to walk—right on time—in cute exercise clothes.  I stumble out of the house, wearing whatever T-shirt and pants look the cleanest.  I like to look at the scenery while we walk; Mom does not.  She’s purposeful about walking, as with everything in her life.  When I pointed out a bench that looked like a lovely stopping point on our walk, she said, “No, that is NOT what we’re doing here.  And stop dawdling.  It looks weird when you walk three feet behind me.”  Mom is a prayer warrior.  As we walk, we talk about the issues in our lives that we’re praying about.  Her faith in answered prayer is incomparable.  I’m learning from her, but my faith is still so very small sometimes.  Mom is joyful, disciplined, and mighty in her faith.  And despite our differences, she’s everything I aspire to be.

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Risk a movement.  I mentioned this phrase on my blog earlier this summer—it’s from one of my favorite passages of poetry by Louis MacNeice.  I’ve learned this summer that every time I have faith enough to risk a movement, God gives me a huge payoff.  Last week, Monty and I went to Nebraska with my dad to see the total solar eclipse.  Monty and Dad planned the details of where we’d go to see it.  I listened to them talk about the traffic we might encounter, the lack of bathrooms for hours on end, and the crowds that would be there.  And I nodded like it sounded amazing, but I was secretly thinking that the whole idea sounded heinous.  And yet, I went.  And there was traffic.  There was a crowd.  The bathrooms were . . . um—let’s say subpar.  And I loved every second of it because it all led up to the eclipse.  Standing there with Monty and Dad, looking up at the sun, was a moment of perfect beauty.  The moon slowly blocked the sun, and the light faded, as if God was turning a heavenly dimmer switch.  The crowd quieted.  The sky turned to dusky twilight, and the crickets started their chorus.  We saw the tiniest of stars—and then, slowly, the sky began to brighten.  The crowd cheered.  We took off our glasses and stood there, in the strange, still-filtered light, truly awestruck.  I kept thinking, “I almost missed this.  I almost missed this!”  There were other moments like that this summer—moments of risking a movement in order to find beauty.  And yes, most of the time I coped with the risk like our cat Mackin copes with life—I inwardly shut my eyes, hunkered down, and braced myself for the worst.  But the lesson I’ve learned this summer is that it doesn’t matter if I’m scared to death; if I’m risking a movement, God’s right there with me.  And He will turn that risk into something beautiful.

When you fall, get back up.  Literally.  On one of my first walks with Mom in June, I had just walked down our driveway, and I rolled my ankle and fell.  Not in a graceful way, either.  I totally smashed into the pavement, cutting my knees and elbows and bruising myself from head to toe.  I wanted to crawl back into my house, collapse on the couch, and politely tell Mom that this walking plan was hazardous to my health and should be immediately discontinued.  But I didn’t.  I got up.  And Mom and I took our walk.  I told Monty about it when I limped through the door and said that I felt so clumsy.  He said, “Everybody falls!”  Of course, I saw the metaphor in it—because nothing thrills me like a good metaphor.  And I knew he was right.  We all fall.  It’s what we do afterwards that makes us who we are.  We either get up, brush ourselves off, and keep walking, or we stay on the pavement and cry and whine and rail at the heavens.  I don’t want to do that anymore.  The view from the pavement just isn’t that great.  I did learn one other lesson about falling—IF YOU FALL, DON’T TELL ADAM.  He asked me the night that it happened if I was okay.  After I said I was, he was merciless in his teasing.  He told me I should be fitted for a wooden leg.  He likened me to Forrest Gump.  He referenced Humpty Dumpty.  Three weeks after it happened, I texted him a song I’d found called “Falling Down” because I knew he’d love it—he immediately texted back, “Hey! You found your life’s theme song!”

There is enormous power in the first three steps of recovery:  “I can’t.  God can.  I’ll let Him.”  I can’t even recall how many times I’ve said those words this summer—as a prayer, as a reminder, as a way to calm my anxious spirit.  There are people in my life who I love with all my heart, and they’ve been struggling this summer.  I want to fix them and make everything better for them.  And the events that have happened in our world in the last few weeks alone—the rioting, the racism, the terrorism, the floods, the fires—my heart has been broken.  I’ve gotten angry.  I’ve looked for God’s hand in it, and I’ve found myself going back to those three steps: I can’t stop it or fix it. God can. I need to let Him.  There’s peace in letting go like that.  It doesn’t mean I don’t still agonize over the people I love or the state of our world, and it doesn’t mean I stop praying.  It just means I stop ruminating on ways to fix it all and turn it over to the One Who can.

Life is beautiful when you embrace its crazy, uncertain moments and look for the joy in them.  This is a fairly new practice for me, but it’s changing my life.  I’m finding that there is always something beautiful to be found, no matter what life throws at you.  I’m also realizing that these moments of beauty are transient and fleeting—I remind myself constantly to focus on them and take them in—because as much as I wish it did, life doesn’t have a pause button.  And there’s no rewinding, either.  So I’ll hold onto this summer forever, in my heart.  And I’ll choose to fall down this time—to my knees—to praise the Father Who gave it to me.

Now—on to autumn. . .