After an unsuccessful attempt to blog, I'm taking it up again. What a shock of wonderful these last few days have been. I don't know what I expected of this summer, but it certainly wasn't this. And yet, somehow, I hoped for it all along. But it wasn't the end of this summer that stuck out to me the most these past few days, though it is quite an amazing end. What sticks out is the in between, the time when there were no answers. The time when I listened.
The times when I got up early and went for an hour-long walk through the tree-canopied trails winding around Hamilton Lakes. The times when I felt sorry for myself on Fridays because I knew there was no one in town to hang out with on Friday nights. The times I did the laundry, the dishes, the vacuuming, the dusting, the errand running. The times when I sat on the deck under the twinkling of the fireflies in the trees. And just listened. I think I found that the best part about the summer was the beauty of the mundane, the joy that came in the waiting. And I think that maybe, just maybe, I learned that the mundane is often where God shows up.
Not that He doesn't let us see some of Him in the extraordinary--my visit to the national forests in Colorado showed me that He definitely does. That still, small voice is so hard to hear in the stuff of the ordinary though. I'd much rather seek Him out among the hills and grassy paths and jagged peaks. He was there, that I am sure of. I am learning to seek and to hear the still, small voice just as clearly amidst the doing of errands, the unfolded piles of laundry, the meticulous brush strokes of redoing furniture, the early morning walks before the day begins. That, I think, is where true joy blossoms.
