summer

I used to think that spring was the favorite, with all its new growth and cool breezes and exuberance. But now I know that it was just because it meant that the cold was gone, and it pointed to a time when everything slows down. A season that is more of a way of life than anything else…summer.

Summer is the favorite, no doubt about it.

It feels crazy now, in the midst of the “dog days” to say that I prefer it over all the other seasons, but I have my reasons. Here are a few of them:

1) Fruit. We have a little party in my house every year when we crack open our first watermelon. And we eat it constantly. Peaches, too. We adore peaches. All the fresh fruits and veggies (not grown by my own labor, let me tell you) just make me happy. I have a goal of having a garden one day…we tried a few years ago, and the squash took over the backyard, and the tomatoes just never did set up right, but one day I will learn. And won’t that be fabulous?

2) The leisurely pace. The school year feels like a rushed mess to me, most of the time. I love that we can sleep late in summer, have nice long breakfasts together, and that daddy is home for an entire month. We paint fingernails, we eat popsicles, we do lots of crafty stuff.

3) We get to play in water. Swimming is a big favorite around here. But we don’t have a pool, so it doesn’t happen as often as we’d like. But we do have a water hose, and a sprinkler, and that’s big fun. BIG fun.

4) Shoes are optional. I hardly wear shoes in the summer. The girls too. That’s gotten us into trouble a few times when we’ve gone out to the grocery, only to realize that one or the other of us have forgotten our shoes. Oh well…

5) Days that last forever. It’s hard as anything on the kids, with the sun coming up early, and setting late, but it’s so nice to have the sun around. I miss it in the winter.

But it’s almost August. I think in my heart, summer ends at the beginning of August, when daddy goes back to work, and the school supplies are bright & shiny on the shelves in the stores, and we have to work our way back into a routine so that early school mornings don’t make us all miserable. The countdown to back-to-school is about to start, and it makes my heart a little achy.

But I have a few more days of glorious summer, and I’m going to live it up while I can.

quilting

Never thought I’d be one who loved anything to do with a sewing machine, but there it is. I adore quilting (machine quilting! I'm not patient enough for hand quilting). A few samples:

I’ve done a few bigger quilts, but I really REALLY love to make baby quilts. There’s just something so fantastic about making a quilt for a little person who hasn’t even arrived yet, and just praying and thinking about him or her while I work on one of these…

So yeah, it’s a passion. Love working with the colors, the different textures. Fabric stores make me swoon.

I want to make a new quilt for our bed (the one I made just looks kinda frumpy to me right now. I started working on it when MA was a bitty, and just finished it a few years ago. It just needs…updating). It's the MASTER bedroom quilt…and I’m a little daunted. So I’m going to start poking around on some quilting/sewing/crafty blogs for inspiration. In fact, on these (for starters):

Block Party Quilting

Handmade By Alissa

Tall Grass Prairie Studio

Marie Madeline Studio

Bramblewood Fashion

Sew Pretty Dresses

So as I start to find favorites they’ll just start to show up on faves over on the left. Consider yourself warned!

the muppet show

Always will be a favorite. Adored the Muppets when I was little, still think they're marvelous. We own Seasons 1-3, and it's such fun introducing the kiddos to these crazy and lovable characters. Highlights (that I can think of right now):

Season 3, Elton John episode, when he sings Crocodile Rock with Muppet crocodiles, and Dr Teeth & the Electric Mayhem.
Anything Swedish Chef.
Beaker's voice.
the Gilda Radner episode.
the Steve Martin episode (banjo!).
the Gogolala Jubilee Jugband singing I'm my own Grandpa (or anything else).
Rowlf on the piano.

I'm sure youtube has a ton of Muppet stuff to view - probably even segments of everything I've mentioned above. My computer blocks youtube, and I haven't taken time to figure out how to make it stop yet, so I can't provide links - apologies!

the Word

I can’t remember a time when the Word of God wasn’t a factor in my life. There are cassette tapes with my tiny voice on it, quoting the birth narrative of Christ. A tale of the time I memorized Psalm 100 in the nursery at church, and then said it in front of the congregation. I think the prize was my own little Bible. Memories of mom pantomiming verses so my sister and I would remember the passages we’d been assigned for school. Numerous Gideon Bibles – the version with the New Testament, Psalms and Proverbs – handed out at Backyard Bible Clubs on mission trips in high school. So much of my life was based on the Book, but I didn’t really grasp much of it.

That happened later, my freshman year in college, in a dorm room while I was plowing my way through Romans. As with so many things in university, there was just an unquenchable hunger for learning, for figuring out, for making things my own. So something in the early chapters of Romans – I hate that I can’t remember exactly what – was used by the Holy Spirit to grab hold of me, and convince me of my utter and desperate need for a Savior. So the Word became a constant companion… It nourished me. It picked me up and carried me home when I walked away from the safety its instruction provided. It was a balm to my broken heart, my wounded soul, again and again. In the years that followed, I was just so hungry for what it had to say… I spent so much time in it that passages from the Psalms and the Epistles would just roll of my tongue when I was praying. It was so beautifully familiar.

And it still is. It’s just – different. I think Seminary somehow made it a technical manual for me, as opposed to a finely crafted love letter. I remember a girl at Seminary scoffing that people still read 5 Psalms and a Proverb as their daily time in the Word – “that’s just so immature.” I had done that for years, and it had made my heart soft, and adoring. Yet somehow I felt ashamed. Somehow felt the need to walk away from immature to mature, as if what she said was somehow binding. All that did was allow me to eventually abandon daily reading, because when I tried to read the more mature stuff in a devotional manner, it didn’t work. I hate that… I’m working to rid myself of that bias, to remember what it is to read the Word, all of it, with adoration. Because, the truth is, it is a Book of beauty, of God’s love for His people, and the world, and it is absolutely lovely and life-changing.

Psalm 119 is a meditation, a love letter, written about the Word of the Lord. I go to it when I’m thinking about the beauty of Scripture. Several of my favorite passages are below, or you can read the Psalm in its entirety here.

Psalm 119

⁹How can a young man keep his way pure?
By guarding it according to your word.
¹⁰ With my whole heart I seek you;
let me not wander from your commandments!
¹¹I have stored up your word in my heart,
that I might not sin against you.
¹²Blessed are you, O LORD;
teach me your statutes!
¹³With my lips I declare
all the rules of your mouth.
¹⁴In the way of your testimonies I delight
as much as in all riches.
¹⁵I will meditate on your precepts
and fix my eyes on your ways.
¹⁶I will delight in your statutes;
I will not forget your word.

⁴¹Let your steadfast love come to me, O LORD,
your salvation according to your promise;
⁴²then shall I have an answer for him who taunts me,
for I trust in your word.
⁴³And take not the word of truth utterly out of my mouth,
for my hope is in your rules.
⁴⁴I will keep your law continually,
forever and ever,
⁴⁵and I shall walk in a wide place,
for I have sought your precepts.
⁴⁶I will also speak of your testimonies before kings
and shall not be put to shame,
⁴⁷for I find my delight in your commandments,
which I love.
⁴⁸I will lift up my hands toward your commandments, which I love,
and I will meditate on your statutes.

⁹⁷Oh how I love your law!
It is my meditation all the day.
⁹⁸Your commandment makes me wiser than my enemies,
for it is ever with me.
⁹⁹I have more understanding than all my teachers,
for your testimonies are my meditation.
¹⁰⁰I understand more than the aged,
for I keep your precepts.
¹⁰¹I hold back my feet from every evil way,
in order to keep your word.
¹⁰²I do not turn aside from your rules,
for you have taught me.
¹⁰³How sweet are your words to my taste,
sweeter than honey to my mouth!
¹⁰⁴Through your precepts I get understanding;
therefore I hate every false way.

¹⁰⁵ Your word is a lamp to my feet
and a light to my path.
¹⁰⁶I have sworn an oath and confirmed it,
to keep your righteous rules.
¹⁰⁷I am severely afflicted;
give me life, O LORD, according to your word!
¹⁰⁸Accept my freewill offerings of praise, O LORD,
and teach me your rules.
¹⁰⁹I hold my life in my hand continually,
but I do not forget your law.
¹¹⁰The wicked have laid a snare for me,
but I do not stray from your precepts.
¹¹¹Your testimonies are my heritage forever,
for they are the joy of my heart.
¹¹²I incline my heart to perform your statutes
forever, to the end.

the beach

I know I said I’d write next about the Word…but today I’m feeling frumpy, and I’m thinking about the beach, so I’m going to write about the beach instead.

I can’t remember the first time we went to the beach. I was young…but I was instantly hooked. A note here – when I say beach, I think somewhere along the Florida coast on the Gulf of Mexico. Not a shivery cold beach in North Carolina or California – beautiful, but not what I have in mind. White sand is a must. Warm, with a constant balmy breeze. The water isn’t cold, but it’s not hot either. And the waves…never…stop…

For me, there is something so restorative about a trip to the beach. Correct that, a vacation to the beach.

One of my bosses, in a life that feels so foreign, before children, had categories for these things:
trip: going somewhere like Disneyworld. super fun, but super exhausting.
visit: going to see people. potential for fun is high but so is the potential for misery. vacation: going somewhere like the beach, and watching seagulls bash their heads against the water. rest is a must. no exhaustion or misery involved.

So, a vacation at the beach. For me, it’s reading fiction under a beach umbrella with a festive drink on one side and my toes buried in the sand. It’s a house, on the beach, with a weathered boardwalk you cross as quickly as possible to get to the super-hot white sand, so you can get to the water and cool off your toes. It’s sand everywhere, but that’s OK, because it’s supposed to be. It’s good food, it’s family. It’s sleeping like you never sleep at home, because the waves are constant, and comforting, and you’re drained from being outside all day. It’s little people looking like sugared donuts because they’re covered with sand all the time. It’s sitting in the sand at night and listening to the waves.

The last trip we took, in 2009, gave me a new appreciation for nighttime at the beach. I was in the first trimester of a pregnancy, and on our 3^rd day there, I started spotting. And it didn’t stop. So I was heartsick with worry, and sleep wasn’t happening. But we were on a beach where sea-turtles build their nests, so there were strict policies about NO LIGHTS outside of houses, or on the beaches at night (apparently it confuses the baby turtles, because they head for the light of the moon to find the water). So the stars….the STARS…were a thing of wonder and beauty. They started right where the water ended, and they were magnificent. So when I wasn’t sleeping, because I felt horrible and didn’t want to wake the whole house up by going outside, I would pull the mini-blinds, and just stare. And I would think to myself, over and over and over again, “The One who made them knows me. He knows what’s happening. And He loves me.” And I’d cry, and eventually fall asleep. The day before we left the beach we went to an awful ER and found out that I was indeed having a miscarriage. I will always think of those moments with the stars, with Him, when I think of that baby.

My heart yearns for the beach. But life being what it is, we don’t get there often enough. Budgets are restrictively tight, and there’s not always wiggle room for a week at the beach. But that doesn’t stop me from dreaming – this is a pic, from that week in 2009, that always greets me from my computer screen.

Don’tcha wanna go??

crawling back

Well, people, after an incredibly long hiatus, I’m attempting to come back to regular blogging.

There are just some things that I’m feeling the need to process thru, and I think that regularly posting thoughts & other things here just might help the processing along…

So, where to begin?

I kinda feel like I need to figure out how to crawl back into my skin. Find Shannon… Not who I think I should be, or who others think I should be, or the mommy-version, or the wife-version, or the busy-busy-busy-with-whatever version… but Just. Plain. Old. Me.

And I’m not quite sure how to get there, to be honest. So I’m trying to think about things that make me come alive, things that stir my passions, and just see what happens. *A disclaimer here. I am passionate about my marriage and my children. That could go without saying. But I’m gonna say it anyway – my sweet little family gets me more fired up than anything else on this planet. But that’s not the point of this journey… The point is to remember – to discover? – the things that make me come alive apart from them, to be the best me I can be apart from them. That way, I’m the best me I can be when I’m with them as well. Win-win, see?*

So I think I’m going to start with writing about the Word of God. It stirs me like little else does.

And hopefully it won’t be 2 years between this post and that one.