Monnnnday

It's Monday evening.
The smoke that has stolen the last few weeks of my summer has moved on, taking with it the hot temperatures. I've traded in my pajama shorts for the full length variety and I'm on my mom's back deck, with a hoodie on, hanging onto to that summer feeling with both hands.

I can't stop crying.

Well, crying may be too strong a word.

I keep tearing up.

The hatred on display in Charlottesville over the weekend, the death of the stunt-driver, (working on Deadpool 2) this morning in Vancouver, a video I just watched, showing the kindness of a garbage truck driver giving a young boy with autism (who excitedly watches him come to their home every week) a Tonka-type garbage truck toy, the sorrow in the opening monologue of Jimmy Fallon's show tonight, photos of Johnny Depp dressed up as Captain Jack Sparrow visiting Vancouver Children's Hospital today; my friend Marg letting me know she's been to hell and back with her first round of chemo and had to quit because she couldn't handle it, missing my boy who's gonna be in Africa for another month ... combine all that with hormones running amok, and well. Tears.


Kindness, hatred, pain, joy, longing  ... this is life. It's messy.

Dear God,

Give our leader's wisdom even if they don't ask for it. I'm asking on their behalf.

Open our eyes so that we see each other the way that You do; with love.

Ignite inside us a passion for justice and righteousness. Give us boldness to speak up when we should.

How can we be kinder? Give us lots of opportunities to try. And when we fail, give us more chances. We need the practice.

Please don't give up on us.

Amen.

And PS, God? Can you just go ahead and heal Marg? Chemo is just too hard. We need her. Just have at that cancer and condemn it to hell. OK? Thanks.

For I will restore health to you, and your wounds I will heal, declares the Lord.

~ Jeremiah 30:17

OneTwoThree

Three things I'm thankful for:

1. Whole, fresh, hot baked chicken, from the deli department. Supper's ready.

2. Productive days.

3. Creative answers to prayer. That God, He's always thinking outside the box.


Shalom,
xo

Summmmer

Love them.


Three things I'm thankful for:

1. Being able to blog from the deck. At night. In my pajama shorts. While listening to the wind in the trees.

2. Sharing the cabin with Clint who is working from the dining room table, listening to him sneeze.

3. The smell of peaches.


Shalom,
xo

Here. And there.

I'm here.
At the lake.
Enjoying an extra long weekend.

It's hot.
(Like really, hot.)
(34 degrees today)

I was born for this.
I wait all year for this season.

Unexpectedly. all 5 kids joined me. Some staying one night, others two, and Clint's staying for three.
(I'm here for four.) (Told you it was an extra long weekend.)

These are my favorite people and we're all together at my happy place, but I started a book a week ago, and while my body is here, my head is in Ravensbruk, Germany - the Nazi's concentration camp for women during the second world war.

Oh. My. Goodness.
Our capacity for evil knows no bounds.

This is a novel based on the real lives of 3 women during WW2. Caroline is a socialite in New York who spends her days volunteering at the French Consulate. Kasia is a Polish teenager who ends up at Ravensbruk with her mom and sister. And Herta is a young female doctor who lives in Germany, desperate for a job.

HOW DID I GET SO LUCKY?
To get to live this life?
To live in Canada?

I hope I'm not wasting it.

(So often when I read books like this, there's a point when the suffering woman says, "You mean the world knew what was going on? Why didn't anyone help us?" and it always haunts me.)



While my kids gathered logs, and chopped them into firewood, I tidied, did laundry, baked biscuits and brownies and read.

Once all the free wood was transported from the neighbour's place to ours, Clint went and bought some axes.

In some cultures, retrieving the sword from the stone means something. Here in the backwoods of Canada, it's Whoever Gets The Axe Out of The Log is King of Cultus.

Collectively, they thought hammering it in deeper was the logical solution:

Two.
Two axes are better than one.

Let's sink another one...

In for a penny, in for a pound...

Hours later, (after using a third axe), they surprised themselves (and probably everyone reading this) and got the axes out, were successful in splitting the wood, and managed to make a campfire with less than a gallon of gasoline.

Summer.

It's just the best, isn't it.


Three things I'm thankful for:


1. Books that make you think.
2. Boys that sometimes don't think.
3. And the girls who love them.


Happy summer, friends,
xo