What Summer Reminds Me About Living
Summers are for a lot of things: dripping watermelon, sticky fingers, bleached hair, and sun-kissed cheeks. While I don’t love the heat of summer, my boys do. Summer vacation: pool time! What’s not to love? My children know how to soak up summer with joy.Me? I try to survive it. When the calendar flipped to July, I quietly celebrated. We’re one month closer to fall, my favorite season. Winter comes just after, my second favorite season. Still, this summer I’ve tried to return to a simpler rhythm. To live with more intention. To be focused. To seek God in the moments that too easily slip past me—where the memorable hides behind the mundane. A jog triggered a vivid childhood memory from another July. Our small Midwestern town was hosting a long-distance race, and my dad—who loved running and knew I did too—took me shopping for new tennis shoes. After all, everyone runs faster in new shoes. On race day, we set out lawn chairs in the front yard and turned sprinklers on to help cool the runners as they passed. We snacked on sugar-coated orange slices. With sticky hands and bouncing pigtails, I waved furiously as the runners ran by. It was a glimpse of childhood joy I rarely think about. As I jogged around the track, I smiled through tears that brimmed in my eyes. Those hot summer days, shadowing my dad, forged some of my most cherished memories. He’s been gone many years now—and I miss him. This summer’s slower pace allowed for this reflection. So have reading—for the pure joy of it. Writing—just to write. Rediscovering long-dormant joys has been good for the soul. Reflection has been good too. I read recently that life and literature are two of our greatest instructors. I would add that God and His Word are the best of all. But how can we live—really live—if we’re too busy to understand the instruction living life and God offer? Carolyn Weber’s book, Holy Is the Day, explores this idea. She shares Madeleine L’Engle’s words about the “synapses” that fire when we read about lives of deep faith. L’Engle writes: “I read their stories (voices in the Bible such as Ezekiel, or Daniel, or the apostles) with sublime wonder, with rapturous joy, acknowledging that reality cannot be organized by us human creatures. It can only be lived. Indifference goes along with perfectionism and literalism as a great killer of story, and perhaps indifference is nothing more than a buffer against fear.” So what did I fear? Truth and clarity struck: I’ve feared fully living. I didn’t realize how easily I slip into indifference—not from apathy, but from self-protection. A method used to avoid disappointment. It’s so very easy to put fear in the wrong things, isn’t it? This earthly life doesn’t offer a bed of roses or a gentle valley where all hopes come true. It’s full of loss, pain, and grief of every kind. Whatever idea of perfection we hold, it is not on this side of heaven. But fear in God—a rightly placed fear—makes all the difference. As Weber puts it: “Fear of God replaces fear of human beings, and in that distinction exists a world (restored versus fallen) of difference. Recognizing, praising, and tapping into this immense power shifts our trudging into dancing.” Wouldn’t we all rather dance through life than trudge through it? I know I would. I need daily reminders of what genuine joy and blessing are—and they’re not external. They’re not situational. They are a person: Jesus Christ. Even David needed reminding. He strayed through a dark and twisted path of sin. Then he pleaded with God: “Restore to me the joy of your salvation” (Psalm 51:12, ESV). David didn’t just ask for joy—he asked for a clean heart and the inner willingness to walk in God’s ways. He wasn’t pursuing the idea of joy, but the giver of joy. David wanted to walk differently.To walk with difference.And he knew the fear of God made all the difference. So this summer, I’m seeking to walk differently.Yes, I’m not a fan of summer heat. Yes, I long for fall.But here, now, Christ lives in me. I pray that reality would sink deep in me. And I pray God would live through me so that others see the difference, and in seeing the difference, God can make all the difference in someone else, too.
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