keepin' cool

 Just a reminder that it won't always be this hot! 
So thankful to experience four GLORIOUS SEASONS here in Pennsylvania. There is something beautiful about each one. The picture above is a familiar sight most Winter evenings.  Hope you're able to stay cool if that's what you need, or to my friends in Australia and Chile, hope your heat is working just fine for you and the cozy blankets are in abundance.  Wherever you are in this great wide world, may you have all you NEED.

I've been feeling a bit of anxiety, (if that's the word) about how quickly this season of Summertime is FLYING BY ME, by us.  I am drinking it in, making memories left and right and just living life.  Yet somehow, each week is flowing into the next so suddenly it's almost shocking.  I don't EVER remember it going this fast.  Oh dear, am I getting old?  Cause that's what "older" people say, how fast the days and years go by.  Last night I laid in bed and just felt anxious inside.  I don't like when that happens.  I thought about all the closets I want to organize, all the laundry that was waiting for me in the morning, all the pictures that I've yet to print, (like 3,000 of them or some astronomacial number). The fact that none of my kids have "proper" baby books, the friends, (and their new babies) I haven't seen in awhile, how empty the fridge is, just STUPID STUFF.....STUFF THAT DOESN'T EVEN MATTER.  The more I let my mind wander, the more it did.  It just went downs paths and up hills and all around streams and rivers and bridges, all "without" my permission.  I just let it wander and it made me anxious because everyTHING I thought to "do" was MY RESPONSIBILITY, (or so I falsely thought and felt).

  THESE EXPECTATIONS ON MYSELF ARE NOT HEALTHY!!  They are not what I was MADE for, to measure up to all these things that I, (and those around me) deem important.

And so here I am at the end of another day given to me.  What have I done today?  I cooked, cleaned, loved, disciplined, folded laundry, (didn't get it put away though, what's new?), took ice cold lemonade to my hard working man,  visited with a lifetime friend, and I lived another day. Nothing much "important" got completed, but I LIVED LIFE. I'M ALIVE AND BREATHING AND HEALTHY AND THAT'S ENOUGH FOR TODAY.  And I'm taking that PRESSURE right off my own shoulders, cause I'm the one who put it there in the first place.

"When you pray, don't pray like those Extra-Super-Holy People.  They think if they say lots of words, God will hear them.  But it's not because you're so clever, or good, or so important, that God will listen to you. God listens to you because he loves you." ~page 224 of The Jesus Storybook Bible by Sally Lloyd-Jones~

p.s. read this GREAT article tonight. Totally worth your time!
Perhaps if you click on it, it will enlarge it enough to read!?