Sisters and Sandbars at Sunset

The summer that I was sixteen years old was the summer my sister and I stood on sandbars in Lake Michigan watching God paint sunsets in the sky.  Night after night, we jogged from our house, four miles, to the beach, with our bathing suits on underneath our clothes, timing our workouts so that we reached the beach in time to wander into the waves, swimming toward the sun as it made its descent into the water.  Elizabeth's hair was long and golden like the disappearing sun and I envied it-my own a mess of dark curls.

Ten yards off the shoreline, we would tread the deep water westward toward the horizon.  Twenty yards further, the water again shallow, we would stand side by side on the sandbar. The floor of Lake Michigan was cool ripples of soft sand, the horizon a parade of one thousand colors from a timeless God who saw all and knew all and painted our lives in the sky above:

• The hazel streaks of light-filled clouds like the hazel of my sister's eyes that I would one day, fifteen years later, see reflected in my long-awaited son.
• The blues and greens of the beach glass we collected in plastic pails as small girls on the same beach, long before innocence gave way to grace and mercy and hallelujah.
• The firey red sky like the life inside her that I would greet with my own hands the night her first baby would be born, her leg on my shoulder, the weight of life red and hot all around me.

Those were the nights of a lifetime of color.  What little we knew, standing in the presence of an all-knowing Lord, who searched us thoroughly, through and through, and lit up the sky with all that He found.

Tying up Loose Ends

 

Goodness, it has been so long since I've written a blog post that I almost forgot how to write one! Please forgive my absence of (gasp!) two weeks, which was completely unintentional and simply the result of life taking priority over writing . . . lovely, lovely life, although I have missed writing and spending time here, which always recharges me in a unique way. 

It has always been my hope that this blog would tell a story, through the years that it is written, and I hate to leave holes in the narrative-unintentional or otherwise.  I hope you will not be bored with a newsy update and I offer the lovely peony above as eye-candy, although entirely unrelated content-wise to the post at hand. 

We have not made an offer on my "dream cottage."  When we saw it, it wasn't yet on the market (which is why I was unable to post pictures), there were tenants in the house and it seems the tenants may be staying longer than originally planned and the cottage won't be on the market until a later time . . . we are waiting and praying and abiding.   We have been in our rental house for ten months and we have the option to stay another year.  We have no definite plans, which is freeing and I am concerning myself with the primary task of enjoying the spring with Wynn and Mr. Marvelous.  I am more than content to wait on the Lord. 

And dream.

And peruse real estate listings.

Thank you for journeying with me.  How glad I am to be your friend.  

Thank you for all of your considered comments.  I read every one of them and love to visit the blogs of those who comment so that I can put a face and a story with a name.  Those of you who have significantly downsized in square footage have truly inspired me!

Many blessings,