This is Summer

I don't particularly love summer. I like spring and fall a lot better but it seems as though we now have two seasons that are either so hot it is unbearable or so cold you don't ever want to leave you bed. Heat and I are just not friends.

I am fair skinned and burn faster than you can imagine. I can go outside for 10 minutes and burn, I can ride in a car and burn, if I don't reapply every 45 minutes I can burn. I can remember as a child our family never went to the beach, well just a few times. I remember my mom telling us to pretend we were Irish because that would at least help people know why we were so fair skinned and wore layers to the beach :-)

Paul has helped me get out of my comfort zone this summer. On the hottest of days he has made me come outside and watch the kids run through the sprinkler and allow them to spray me. He has made us all get in the hot hot hot hot car and go get ice cream. Watching your two year old eat ice cream really is a joy and a mess. He made us go fishing as a family the other night....we didn't catch anything and the mosquitoes were everywhere but we went.

So maybe just maybe this whole summer thing is starting to grow on me.

Watching Henry chase lightning bugs, watching Tannie experience the pool, watching them both pull down the branches of the mulberry tree and eat the berries- now that is summer and is something I am enjoying.

This week the great plains conference of the United Methodist Church is gathering for annual conference. We are in Wichita and it is HOT. Yet as I walked to and from my car today I wasn't upset about the heat, I just simply soaked it in (it also helped that this nice man in a golf cart drove me to my car in the heat of the afternoon!)

This is my first conference. I have found it to be interesting so far and I have learned a thing or two I didn't know but the part I truly enjoyed and will soak in was being in the clergy section. Going to the clergy sessions, seeing my name listed in the long booklet of clergy in our conference, along with the retired clergy which includes my grandfather. I am fulfilling his legacy and seeing my name with his- well that was enough for me to know that I truly am.

When we focus on what we don't like about things we aren't able to live in the present and in the moment. We aren't able to experience the beauty of this earth that God has created, we aren't able to fully participate in the Kingdom of God that is everywhere we go.

Enjoy the heat, go to the pool, watch your kids chase fireflies and experience the Kingdom of God in everything you do.

Also, my mother in-laws apple pie really is the icing on the cake

Have a blessed summer.