It’s a very relaxing two weeks on stay-cation.
Week one was filled with the sounds of children visiting us grandparents. It was filled with drive time to and from camp. It included game time playing, Flip 7, Scrabble, & Monopoly Cards. It included sitting around the fire pit roasting hotdogs and playing childhood memory games. It included a relay race in the yard, a game of catch, and a few minutes on the rotating swing hanging from a tree. It included the gracious gift of a daughter-in-love weeding my garden and digging up plants and moving them to create beautiful symmetry as you walk to the front door.
Week two returned to a quiet home with a mind battling the idea of rest. There is this true resistance to rest. Throughout the day the thought would return, you should post something, you should write something, you should check messages, you should… But I resisted and retreated to read a book, listen to a sermon, enjoy the music of birds singing, and the sound of rain hitting the roof during a major storm.
Then came Thursday. It was a day in the community of others that gathered to celebrate the life of a dear friend. A man that lived his life to the fullest, a man as others would say, sprinted through life and touched everyone in a meaningful way.
Then came Friday, July 4, Independence day for the US. Rest time was over. It was a day to get back in the groove of life, to get back to the tasks at hand, to get back to reflecting on the must dos on the assignment and the opportunities put before me.
One of the task on that list of things to do was clean the windows. As I was cleaning the windows, a rare thought popped into my head- you should clean the screens too. The idea that screens should also be cleaned entered my mind years ago from the movie, My Cousin Vinny.
I pulled the reusable paper towels I purchased from the Walmart clearance isle and a scrub brush and cleaned the screens. There was more dirt on that reusable paper towel than I wish to capture with a picture but it was nowhere near the filth pictured on the photos from the scene in My Cousin Vinny.
It felt good to be back on task! It was fun and relaxing for me to walk through the house and look through the windows beyond the very clean screens and see all there is just outside my doors. Although the fingerprints of children are no longer on the windows, the memory of time spent lingers on.
Just outside my window, I can see clearly all the things the Lord has created. I can see all the life that exist just outside my door. I can see all the Lord is calling me to do. There are many assignments I have been given in this life- daughter, wife, mother, grandparent, friend, confidant, and disciple. While competing in a Bobsled race is not one of my assignments, I am willing to go where the Lord sends me to do his will.
I end this week referencing a song I sang as a child. The movie clips from Cool Runnings exemplifies removing the dirt of the screens I put on throughout my life so I can see clearly all the obstacles ( as a child I would sing all the ice sickles) in my way.
As Paul testifies in Philippians 3:13-14, “Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
Pressing on…
Always grateful,
Walking In Your Gifts 