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.

9 Comments

  1. Beautiful! Sisters are the best, especially when we are older and can truly appreciate each other. 🙂

  2. Beautiful!!!!! 🙂 You are so blessed!

    BTW, I am having a giveaway…well a series of them…starting with a slipcover! 🙂 I thought I would stop in to let you and your readers know…

    Xo, Meme

  3. Such a beautifully written post!
    I’m so glad we’re friends, and I’m positively DETERMINED to spend some time with you in person this year!!!

  4. This was beautiful. I was never this close to my sister 4.5 years younger than me but I hope my two little girls grow up to appreciate each other this deeply.

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