One of the things I love most about living in the Pacific Northwest is that we enjoy four distinct seasons. Unlike most, Summer is not my favorite. I am more partial not to the sunny months but to the under 70 degree days with more clouds than sun. Yes, blue skies with a few fluffy cumulous clouds are so beautiful. But do you know what I like best about sunny days? How happy everyone else is about them!
In my growing up years, I thought there were only two seasons – schoolyear and Summer. Football games and raking lodgepole pine needles (not leaves, needles!) flowed toward Thanksgiving and some of my favorite foods. Then snowy Christmas breaks and lots of sledding and snowmobiling that could continue through February some years! It seemed so soon that the school year was on the downslope and there were science fairs, and (handwritten) papers due and baseball games and fishing and rediscovering our bicycles for the weekends. The season of “schoolyear” culminated in the first dips in the near-by swimming holes and the almost always rain-soaked Memorial Weekend family tent camping adventure. Then it was Summer. Schoolyear and Summer. Fond memories – except maybe the pine needles.
The rhythms of the weeks or years, however you count them, set a pace for the seasons of our lives, don’t you think? Our perspectives and priorities change through the seasons and there can be some weariness or wariness as we move through them. Change and reshaping and redefining. Personally, as I have shared with many of you, this season for my extended family is shaped by my parents’ aging and health decline. There is sorrow and unsettledness and wishing things were different. Like widowhood, this is a season of becoming part of a club I didn’t ever want to join.
Whether your season is juggling preschoolers or shepherding the hearts of the teens and young adults in your life, or loving well our aging loved ones, there always comes a need to reset priorities. To explore the season of life you are in now – realistically but hope-fully – and to do that with a growing reliance on God’s love and grace and mercy.
Our Lord Jesus spoke this precious message to each of us …
“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Matthew 11.28-30
Fall Women’s Retreat
I am excited to share that we are planning a time this Fall for women to join together to consider resetting priorities to align more closely with God’s desires for us and less upon what the current culture serves up. I do hope you will come be a part of our Women’s Retreat, September 26 & 27, Friday evening and Saturday morning, at PCC. Watch for registrations to begin in mid-August.
Humbly and expectantly, Colleen
Here are a couple of VBS prayer points for this week … event is August 4-8 at PCC
- Praise to be half-way to our registration goals … with just 12 days to go!
- So grateful for every effort and help (donations, lending of requested things, coming alongside and supporting); and every prayer!
- Pray for children’s lives to be impacted for God’s good work in their hearts and minds for this sweet season of their lives.