Summer's Adieu - August 29, 2010

(NOTE:  Hi friends!  How I've missed this quiet tapping, feeling like I'm talking to myself and you all at the same time.  This post was created well over a week ago, and never got sent because I wanted to sleep on it, maybe add some pictures...... and then we lost our internet connection for several days..... and then the schedules of life happened and kept on happening.   I'm afraid it's an indication of where blogging ends up on my priority list these days.  sigh.)


Well.  Summer is gone....and what a summer it has been.   Busy, relaxing, painful, happy, productive, lazy.....

Life-changing, really.

I love summers.  For the last decade or so, almost every summer has marked something extremely significant in our lives. (Bear with we as I reminisce...)

2000 - I Graduated from college & started grad school, Trip to the Cayman Islands, where David     and I re-started our dating relationship (long story)
2001 - I Graduated grad school, David & I were married
2002 - Kayla's Birth
2003 - Move to Mississippi & Alabama, David started grad school
2004 - Karissa's Birth, The Battle of the MISSISSIPPI MOLD
2005 - Moved from Mississippi to full-time Alabama (?? Is that what happened?? memory's gettin' foggy)
2006 - Caiden's Birth
2007 - Move to Indiana, David started intense PhD work, house remodeling, I narrowly escaped a nervous breakdown (literally)
2008 - Wonderful, blissful, relaxing summer of no major change
2009 - Corin's Birth
2010 - changes, changes....Losses, gains, perspective,  investments in the future, with paintbrushes and running shoes and so much in between.

As you see, summers are pretty significant around here. (Notice the moving/having babies pattern?)

And now tomorrow begins a new school year, a new schedule, a new season.  I am so ready. 

Today I've been poring over my schedule, tweaking and rearranging and striving to maintain margin.  (I am significantly terrified of what happens to me with a marginless schedule.)

I begin this year with new perspective, new determination, new humility and new confidence.  I have learned so many lessons this summer.  Some from doing the right things with constancy.   Others from doing the wrong things or in the wrong ways.   Some lessons from loss, some from gain.  Lessons in being more gentle and toughening up.  Even trying to express it is a bit overwhelming. 

I have a fresh sense of my utter need, my weakness.  And a powerful sense of God's strength and healing grace.

So...here's to new pencils and freshly printed schedules and revised budgets and dusted-off lunchboxes and some fun new voice students!

I wish for you - for us all - a year of balance and growth.

And oh....how I've missed you, blogging friends.