My heart is a mix between smiling with amazing memories and extreme gratitude, marbled with an enormous heaviness knowing the end is almost here. Not an end end… but an end of season none-the-less.
Change, no matter what kind or for what reason, is never easy.
Next weekend will be our last weekend at the lake for this season. When I turn around and glance behind me, I say over and over “Wow the summer went by soooo fast!” But, if I take the time to click through all my photos (thousands and thousands of them neatly organized in weekly folders on my computer) of our journeys and memories here this season, I am beyond in awe at how much we have done, seen, shared, experienced, and been blessed with. I am again truly humbled by the amazing community we have become a part of here.
God clearly had a much bigger plan for our little family in deep mourning on that first weekend we arrived here last spring. And as hard as that is to understand, I am grateful.
Twenty-two weekends we were granted at the lake this summer. Twenty-two weekends of the good, the bad, and the ugly. Twenty-two weekends of sun, sand, laughter, tears, and amazing food. Twenty-two weekends of real life, true love, and forever friends and family.
I sit here, honestly wondering how I will get from next weekend until next April when we can return. I wonder how I will be able to will myself to lock the camper door and just drive away knowing we won't return for seven months. I fight back the tears just thinking about it.
A final, yet really-only-temporary goodbye, for a really long time has almost again arrived.
It’s not that I’m not excited for what’s next… to have time to scrapbook again, to have my husband out hunting again, and for us to embark in all the fun winter activities we will surely experience… But just knowing very very soon there will be goodbyes here, there will be the closing of our camper, and my van - filled with myself, my eight year old, my puppy, my camera, and our weekend food supply, will no longer make the weekly journey down the highway from our driveway at home to our driveway at the lake. No more sunsets over still waters, no more mornings on the deck drinking coffee as the sun breathes its hellos, no more campfires across the way, no more campground community filled with its golf cart traffic, conversations, laughter, gossips, beach time, water activities, and its special healing salve which somehow combines everything good and spreads itself instantly over the not-so-great hurts, disappointments, and stresses of my every day life away from here.
As I try use up the contents of our pantry and slowly continue to empty out the fridge and freezer after an entire season of being fully stocked, as we take a few things home each weekend (the boat, the jetski, the paddle boat, the golf cart…) and as we plan and prepare for the big weekend next weekend, that final weekend when we have to drive away knowing we won’t be coming back for a long, long time… I can’t help but think about how someday this might be us in our big house as we prepare to move from home to nursing home. But that farewell will not be followed by the return of a spring hello. That farewell however, will bring us one step closer to our Heavenly hello.
All these continued change of seasons I know will continue to bring us closer and closer to that final change of season. Unfortunately we will never know when each of our final seasons are going to be. It's my reminder how I must never take one day, one moment of my life for granted (even though I know I will ~ I always do).
I’m already thinking ahead to next summer and I earnestly pray we will all be returning. I pray none of us lose a spouse or a child in this next season. I pray no one is diagnosed with cancer or great illness in this next season. It’s not that I think of myself as a pessimist, but more a realist. I think this happens to people after moments of great loss. Your eyes suddenly see life differently and you realize life and health are not guaranteed, and you spend a little more time appreciating what we do have, and analyzing the how’s and why’s of what we do amid how we live in a more grounded and realist manner. Perhaps it’s my defense mechanism against the emotional and spiritual pain of loss and disappointment. I got caught off guard once in life, and swore it would never happen again.
I’m also struck with the reality that the bigger my friend group grows, the greater the chance for someone within us to experience loss, to experience illness, to mourn, grieve, lose… It’s one of those great risks that come when you allow yourself to love on a greater and grander scale beyond yourself. And of course, on the flip side, I know we will also get the opportunity to experience the great joys and celebrations of additions and accomplishments with each other as well. It's interesting how I’m 41 years old and really, for the first time in life, learning about the true meaning and advantages of great friendships.
We all have many many seasons before us. Lord willing we will be granted years and years of continued endings and beginnings. But as fast as time is speeding by, I know it will only be a few more blinks before nearly all of our lifetimes will behind us. Like this moment, which I am desperately trying to slow and savor, I pray all of the coming seasons I can intentionally do the same with. May I always be looking ahead asking what it is I need from this season to help carry me successfully through the following season to come.
I pray as I continue to walk through the upcoming seasons of change in my life that I won't get caught up in the mundane of the moment, the continued chaos of the crazy, and the overwhelm of the unknown. I pray that as I am blessed to continue through each new season that I will be able to breathe deep my true meaning and purpose. May I not get lost and drown in all life’s daily details.
May the quiet sunrises shrouded in humid fog get me through the cloudy days when the sun won’t shine for days on end. May the three digit heat of this season get me through the below zero temps of the next.
May the summer sunsets of this season carry me through the winter storms of next season.
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