August

It is August, and a breeze blows.  In Minnesota, the days dropping into August mean a slow drifting in the air to cooler nights.  A gentle hint of what is to come.  In the south, it feels as if God went to the thermostat and turned it up to a whole new level of hot.  No matter the weather, the turning of the days, the marking of this month, lets us know we are over halfway there.  

2020 has been brutal and scary, raw and painful.  It has been beautiful and funny and an unearthing of who we are.

It is a seismic shifting into a future yet to be determined. The old is gone, the new too soon to grasp, but coming nonetheless.

The layers peel off one by one revealing hearts and minds and either one’s understanding of humanity or the lack of such.

What a gift to live through such wonders.  What a blessing that God put us in this precise moment of time.  For such a time as this, you and I were very intentionally created.  God put our children here in this exact moment to experience the world the way it is right now, churning it in their minds and within their makeup, using this chaos to form in them something that will produce fruit of a beautiful future.  In the years to come, their stories will take our breath away. He knows they are capable of turning the confusion of their childhood into something that makes sense.  He also knows as a momma I have all I need to walk them through a pandemic and all the aftershocks of such an event, even when I feel vastly under-equipped.

So, August, one day at a time, walk us through what’s next.  God, fill us with peace, wisdom, gentleness, strength, and patience.  Remind us as we watch our babies walk through the doors of a school building and our knees are weak and our thoughts are flying, that You are quite literally walking stride in stride with them. Bring to mind Your complete and total awareness, always, of their future, and the fact that You cover them with the strongest of wings. Remind us if they come home sick with a fever that You are still God, and Your plans for them are still great.  As August fades to the next and the next, keep our feet moving and our eyes fixed on You.  

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

Jeremiah 29:11