July Reflection
Summer is my favorite time of year, but this summer has been hard in so many ways. I always like Emily P. Freeman’s reflection questions, but when I saw the ones she sent for June, they resonated strongly with me, and I really wanted to think through them to try to separate the difficult things and the beautiful things, and maybe even where they overlapped for me this month.
In 5 words, describe the June you actually had.
Love
Learning
Trust
Roller coaster
Together
When was a moment that felt the way you think June ought to feel?
We went to Tybee Island one day in early June. It was the first time my kids had ever been to the beach in the summer–we had always gone over fall break, or spring break, or even January, all times when it was too cold to do much in the water. While Joe and the kids have no special attachment to the beach, I am in love with it, and I had missed it intensely. I packed boogie boards even though I knew I would be the only one using them, and I bought new sunscreen, and I piled a bag with beach towels. As the day approached, I was more and more excited.
I could describe the whole day, and the extreme joy I felt at being in one of my favorite places with all my favorite people, but I’m going to stick with this one moment when I was sitting alone with our things under the umbrella, watching Natalie kick her way along the edge of the water, and Ryan and Joe standing waist-deep, all talking and doing this thing that isn’t on any of their top ten lists, but they were there because of how happy it made me, and they were all finding their own ways to enjoy it. The heat pressed in, I twisted my toes into the sand, and I inhaled the salty air, and I felt, all the way down to my bones, this deep moment of summer: freedom, joy, and love, and all of it being reflected back to me in the people I love most.
What’s one way you will make room to be with this current, right-now version of yourself in July?
I’m a fairly anxious person, and my fears have chewed large holes in me over the past month. One thing I want to carry into July is the reminder that learning is a process, and I can practice it over and over instead of expecting myself to be instantly healed. I want to bring the practice of giving myself grace and then turning everything over to God while staying open to what he is teaching me.
How has your summer been? What are you taking with you into July?