It seems that try as I might, I am incapable of writing in the summer. I have had a million ideas but even the revisiting of my idea notes is a senseless effort in frustration. So I gave it up. Summer creativity took the form of painting, photography, gardening, and cooking. I loved it. We’ve had a hot hot summer and not a lick of rain here in Oregon. It was fabulous.

The clock hits a frenzied tick-tocks in my head in the summer. I enter hummingbird mode. Every minute is prized and must be scrupulously spent – I wait nine months for this! I literally have to spend all summer ignoring that it is slipping away and, instead, appreciating its decadent wonder.

But now the kids are back to school, all too soon, and I find myself in my comfy chair, laptop on lap, determined not to lament the passing of my favorite season. I home-school my son and one of our favorite places to sit for his classes is in our rustic living room with its majestic ceiling-high fireplace pictured above. It’s a superb place to spend my Fall, Winter, and Spring with my son.

I am learning that one of my mental associations for writing is the candle warmer in the photo’s foreground. I use it as my coffee warmer because I love coffee and enjoy it hot to the last drop. Mid-summer I relish my coffee in a to-go cup as I only sit around for the quickest minute, and, bored as a bee, I buzz from one pleasure to another. But come the school year, I gear way down as my comfy chair holds me close and long.

School started this week and the thought of writing started as a tiny trickle on the first day. Today is day 3 and it is a little brook, bubbling briskly by, dancing around perfect polished rocks and ferrying pretty fallen leaves downstream.

What got the stream going? The little red light reflected on my coffee cup. What a great revelation – coffee warmer on, writing-brain on! So now that I’ve figured that out I can hold up the fantastic gift that is Summer and offer it back to the Giver in deep thanks.  I can trust that He who enriched us with it has many other wonderful gifts to bestow. I will not shun them by clinging tenaciously to what is passing. Moreover, He is a supremely more wonderful gift than the best Summer, no matter the Falls, Winters, and Springs of our lives.

Ecclesiastes image from https://slideplayer.com/slide/6394320/  on 9/4/2018