According to the calendar, Summer is almost over.
A few nights ago to mark the end of the season, we took the kids over to a friends house and roasted marshmallows and made s’mores. As the sun set, the lightning bugs began to flicker and dance in the dusk. Watching the kids groping the evening air trying to catch the fire flies reminded me of my own lost childhood summers and nights spent playing flashlight tag and camping out in my backyard with my cousins. It was a sweet and sad memory.
I’m an early riser by nature, and in the summer I’m usually up by 5:30 or 6. I wish I could sleep later, but even when I was a teenager I couldn’t sleep in. (Now, I can nap three or four hours, but that is another story all together).
While laying in bed in the mornings this summer, I’ve developed a new ritual that feeds my soul. When I wake up, I’ve begun listening. I can hear the birds calling. First the songbirds and then the pigeons that roost in the empty house across the street. Then the cicadas begin to screesh. I can hear my oldest kids up stairs (they are early risers too) playing with each other. I can hear the sound of car driving by every now and then. In the distance, I can hear dogs barking to each other throughout the neighborhood. I can hear the sound of my neighbor leave his house, close his car door, and drive off to work.
It is amazing how much you can hear when you are still enough to really listen.
Summer is almost over and my morning ritual has already begun to fade as the sun shows herself later and later each day. Eventually, it will be lost all together, and I’ll have to set my alarm. As summer ends and the demands of work and family increase, I can too feel the world is pulling at me. Pulling me away from the quiet gift of morning. That scares me because I know that in the past that sometimes I’ve been pulled under. I don’t know if you have ever felt that way, pulled under by the tide of life, but I sure have—in relationships with friends and family, at work, at church, heck even just getting out of bed in the morning can be difficult. Its like, at times, God has closed his eyes to me, and I wonder, “Where is he? Why does God let this !@#$ happen to me?
Everyday people come into my office asking some form of this question too. Often times it sounds a whole lot nicer. Other times a whole lot more honest. But on a deep level we all struggle with coming to terms of the pain of living in a world that is broken and crooked and achig to be set straight and healed.
As a therapist and pastor, I have the privilidge of walking with people as they ask God the hard questions about life and love. I get to help others live more fully, love more deeply and come to know God in ways that change them forever.
Whatever your questions are, I hope this blog can become a place where you will join me on the journey of the hard questions:
What hurts?
What relationships do you struggle with?
What resentments do you carry?
What fears are you facing?
If I can help in your journey, let me know. Send me your questions about life, love, and God to, [email protected].
