Only a few more weeks technically, according to the calendar and the solar equinox, left of summer now.
I can struggle with fall, as all of summer dies away — and there’s all these harbingers of the long winter coming.
So even as kids head back to school and pumpkins ripen, I’m all here for the string of days left of sweet corn and swimming suits and bare toes and zinnia bouquets and light like falling on faces we love and all the days are adding up to make years.
True, there’s only a few more days till our youngest daughter starts back to reading and writing and arithmetic.
And our Shalom heads out the farm laneway, turns and waves, and drives down our gravel road, off to her next year of university, a handful of days now here in the very last weeks of summer, before we stand on the front porch and wave goodbye, as the minutes slip away, and everything changes, yet again.
“You don’t miss a beat when thankfulness is the beat of your heart.”
You don’t miss a beat when thankfulness is the beat of your heart.
You only get so many summers. They say that, and sure, it’s true: All 4 of our sons have about flown the coop, up and gone, calling another door home. All our time together, it all went by in a blink. Why did I think it somehow wouldn’t?
And yet it’s also true, no matter the ages of your kids: Simply offer your kids real withness and witness — and there will be more days and ways to keep enjoying each other, no matter what the calendar says.
That doesn’t change the fact that there are days when I have to blink back the ache for more days we took off for more of the lake, just to light one more campfire and roast just a few more melting s’mores.
So before the sun even comes up today, and this week slides toward the weekend, the clock ticking so loud in my ears — there’s this rolling over in the morning toward the Farmer, this desperate murmur in his ear:
“Yep, here we are again: Only a few more days left of summer —- what are we going to do?”
The Farmer doesn’t even open his eyes, and I can feel his steadying smile.
“Be grateful. We are going to be grateful.”
And he draws me so close the words brush my ear, those words of every soul whisperer, and you never miss a beat when thankfulness is the beat of your heart.
“It’s never the wasting of time that hurts so much as the wasting of our intentions.”
And before the sun goes down, a bunch of the kids carry corn cobs up to the side porch and we sit there in this circle husking and I keep looking round at their sun-kissed faces, that’s all I can think, my hands all full of these husks:
It’s never the wasting of time that hurts so much as the wasting of our intentions.
There are corn husks and silks all over the porch. Who cares what the calendar says?
Calendars can con: there are really only as many days left as you actually really choose to live.
In the end, everyone ends up at the end of their lives — but only a few live the whole expanse of their life.
And come evening, after everyone leaves the dinner table, I’m still sitting there —
eating the last of chocolate crumbs right off the plate.
The Easy Seize-the-Last-of-Summer Plan
Free Printable of the Seize-the-Last-of-Summer Plan
Just do two a day:
1. Make a fruit pie
2. Eat under stars
3. Walk through the woods, some trees, long grass
4. Dip both feet in water
5. Sing hymns around flame {choice: candles or campfire}
6. Lick drippy ice cream
7. Find a swing and swing high
8. Pick a bouquet of wildflowers : set in sill. Or #BetheG.I.F.T. and give it away.
9. Play one game of anything out on grass {frisbee, baseball, soccer, croquet, volleyball}
10. Eat something fresh {from the garden or the market or your mother’s}
11. Lay down on grass, look up and watch clouds for five minutes
12. Dance. Dance on the beach, on a porch, on your toes, dance on until something in you feels lighter.
13. Open a window. Listen to the world. Slow. Still. Pray before that open window.
14. Sit with someone you love and watch the sunset. Say it out loud: Thank you.
Click here to Print Free Seize-the-Last-of-Summer Plan:
14 Simple Memories to Make Anywhere in the Last Few Weeks of Summer
{Looking forward to seeing your photos on Facebook or Instagram of your own
#SeizetheLastofSummer #1000gifts}
Gifts and Gratitude
his is the Life Plan to change your life span and your GraceSpan — try gently picking up a pen and looking for gifts of grace, even here, to count, all from a good and relentlessly loving God who draws near with grace upon grace in our heartache.
With spacious lines to name three gifts each day, and uniquely formatted to daily see how God has shown up with gifts on this day of the month, on all the previous months, Gifts & Gratitudes gently helps grow trust in a God who doesn’t always explain our suffering but who always enters into it with us. Taking pen to paper each day will help trace God’s goodness and keep a record of gratitude. And because of Jesus… there is always, always, always something — Someone — to be thankful for.
If you’re seeking deeper peace, in a world of tender pain…. if you’re looking for hope in the midst of all kinds of hurt… beginning this daily practice of looking for Gifts & Gratitudes helps you see the way forward.
