SC Weekly

OK, I started this stream of consciousness thing last week, so if you found it completely boring, skip this post.  I decided to call it SC weekly to give me the option of doing it on any day I want. Here we go!

I have a lot of ideas for posts about backpacking with the fam and about Positive Parenting Principles, but for some reason, I cannot seem to get myself to sit down and gather up my thoughts enough to write them down.  They just kind of sit there in my brain floating around like jellyfish.  I have been trying to do more summer things this week because I was thinking that summer wasn’t feeling any different than the rest of the year, and that was bumming me out, but what I have found is that the more I try to create that summer “feeling”, the more elusive it becomes.  Sometimes, I think that expectations of what summer or Christmas or romance or friendship is supposed to “feel” like, makes me form fit my life into certain parameters, and when it doesn’t fit these parameters, I can’t seem to achieve the joy that I desire.  In the book, One Thousand Gifts, which I have been slowly working myself through since spring, Voskamp says that she thinks CS Lewis was on to something when he wrote his book, Surprised by Joy.  She says that “Expectations kill relationships”—especially with God.  This means that if I expect certain things from God and expect my life to be a certain way, I will most certainly be disappointed and disillusioned because God’s ways are not my own.  But by giving up my ideas of what I think things, feelings, relationships are supposed  to be, I tell God that I trust His judgment and that His ways are best.  That way when He gives me things I love or when I feel wonderfully fulfilled, I will be full of joy because my expectations were not dashed.  I only expected to be able to trust in my Lord—those expectations will always be accurate and then all the rest is just frosting on the cake. Anyway, that’s what I have been thinkin’ about today.  I also think it strange that I get so worried about summer speeding by that in the middle of June I am counting the weeks until school starts and I get angry seeing all the cheery “back to school” things in the stores because I haven’t had enough of summer yet.  Why can’t I just live in the moment and enjoy the summer that I have now—right here—this moment—instead of ruining it with my anxiety of its ending?  So there you have it.  But I did think of something else.  I really like going to the concert in the park on Thursday nights at Bandshell, and we hadn’t gone yet, so last Thursday night, we put Neo in the back of the car, loaded the family up in the rest of the car, went to Hy Vee and got a bucket of chicken and set out for Bandshell.  Then we ate and we people watched and we listened to music and it was lovely.  Do you know that Ames has been having concerts in that very park since about 1910 or so?  It’s true.  I am proud to be a part of such a longstanding Ames tradition.  It feels good to part of a community and do neighborly, community kind of stuff like that.  And this Thursday night I am sitting here listening to the Cicada singing and trying to live in the moment.  Maybe it will feel more like summer if I eat a fudgesicle.  Yeah.  I’m pretty sure it will. 

…yet I will rejoice in the LORD;
I will take joy in the God of my salvation.

Habakkuk 3:18 ESV