Summering, So Far

I have gone almost the entire month of June without writing anything here, but it's not for lack of living! Just lack of time to write a blog post about all the living....

Life with Bingley and Darcy is excellent.  We love the gentlemen! They are fully settled-in, and next month, after their rabies shot, they'll be able to frolic outside, too. This is good because Darcy has already proven himself a ready and willing hunter: he loves catching houseflies. 

Finn turned 15 (FIFTEEN!!!) this month.  On my walk this morning I was thinking about my little tow-headed toddler who used to walk down the lane with me, picking Queen Anne's Lace, is now a somewhat tow-headed teenager, asking to drive down the lane!  This month he's finishing math, doing his standardized testing, learning the Arabic alphabet, working a couple times a week on the farm for my cousin, and starting a bit of work as a research assistant for a writer friend.  That's my Finn.

 This week Annie is at a church day camp 15 minutes away; she's enjoying it so far.  But I feel wistful every time I drop her off; she seems so old, so capable, yet still so little (she's 11.5, but pretty dainty for her age).  

My husband's cousin got married last weekend, and it was one of those epic, memorable receptions: a sit-down dinner for 300, a photo booth, fun music, sparklers, a conga line, and hands-down the finest best man's toast I've ever heard, a beautiful tribute by the groom's brother that didn't fail to mention their father, who died nearly two years ago.  I'm not sure anyone listening could have possibly made it through the speech with a dry eye; I know I didn't. 

My Dad is hanging in there, and we return to Charleston on July 13th for a week.  We hope to spend a few days at the beach and a couple days visiting cousins (from opposite sides of my family!) who will serendipitously be in town at the same time!  I'm looking forward to it; I want to see my Dad. He has a PET scan this Friday to check on some bone lesions that were spotted on his most recent CT scan; I appreciate prayers for that. "No cancer in the bones" would be a very acceptable request. :)

I'm reading and thinking and journaling a lot, and working to finish my "light edit" of the first draft of the book I wrote, so I can send it to my First Reader: my college best friend, who is now a professor of English literature, who kindly offered to be my first reader when she heard about my book. It's a scary thing, to have someone read your stuff, and I trust her: she knows literature well, she knows me well, and she has already published her own book, so she understands this process. Finding the time to work on my little novel while also exercising, managing the house, taking care of children, organizing life--well, it's a challenge. But somehow, miraculously, it is happening. 

I met with a landscape company this morning to start discussing a Big Project: landscaping our northeast side yard! The fence line was moved last year, but we were stymied in our plans and progress by the staggering amount of boulders and briars that flourish in that area.  So we've decided to leave it to the professionals (we hope).  We're going to create a plan to grade, move rocks, and landscape--making the area both easy to maintain and yet also still charming and interesting.  The landscape designer said "this will be easy and fun" and I had to laugh, as those are two adjectives my husband and I would NOT apply to our experience with trying to move rocks and deal with briars.  Heavy equipment makes all the difference!

Our children's bathroom is still coming along--well, it was, but we're now waiting for my excellent-but-bad-at-scheduling tile man to tile the walls.  It'll happen eventually; for now, I like to go in every couple of days and enjoy the cool marble on my feet and the prettiness of the blue-grey cabinet. Photos soon!

And above all these things, and better than all these things, I truly believe God is revealing Himself to me in new ways this month.  I have been present and paying attention; I've been asking, seeking, knocking.  I let go of social media for a while which helps quiet the mind (I've found), and I read something really illuminating (which wasn't even in a "religious" book at all!) earlier this month--maybe I'll share it sometime.  The older I get the more I find that my faith, my religious experience, my processes of sanctification, are outside of what anyone might think when they think of "spiritual growth."  Formal Bible studies have their place, but for me it has come less from a highly-organized approach to study and much more from just reading the Bible itself, praying, writing, and sitting still. When I sit still, when I stop overthinking and over-planning and overdoing, and make margin in my life (not to fill the margin up with more stuff, mind you! but to have simple space), that's when the Lord's revelation occurs.

I feel I'll be back to writing more here now!  There's always so much to say--it's just so hard to find the time to say it!