Sunday, June 27, 2010

THESE ARE THE DAYS



It never fails. When the month of June arrives, I hear playing in my head the old song, “Summertime, and the living is easy. Fish are jumpin’ and the cotton is high…” The words paint a picture of carefree days filled with delights only to be captured in the window of time called summer.

We all remember (as a child) when, on any given day, time stood still. For me those days included riding my bike for hours, many miles from home, when the world was not so threatening. On a recent trip back home, I retraced some of my bicycle miles and was amazed to realize how far away from home I had actually traveled. Like rewinding an old movie in my mind, I remembered not only the scenery, but I recalled the keen sense of freedom I felt, wind blowing through my hair, peddling furiously to buildup enough speed to not only stay cooler, but so I could coast and daringly take my hands off the handlebars. Only by the sun’s position in the sky did I guess when it was time to ride back home for supper. And even afterwards, twilight called me and my older sister outside again to enjoy more adventures of catching fireflies in a ball fruit jar, or laying out under a star studded sky in search of the milky way or the big dipper.

Before the days of computers, cell phones, Nintendo, and video games were days of real imagination—when clouds became sculptures, sprinklers watered the flowers as well as kids running through streams of magical, cooling bliss—when two tin cans and a string became an extraordinary means of communication with a playmate. Another favorite June pastime: searching tirelessly for four leaf clovers, and gathering enough red-blossomed stems to make a chained headdress for my hair.

Little treasures with great big memories.

Priceless.

Now that I’m grown up, my mind is more tuned to everyday challenges….making a living, running a speaking and writing ministry, holding a support group, answering a great number of phone calls daily—and an ever present awareness of how many broken people there are who need help, healing, and a whole new batch of memories. Many did not have great childhood memories—and the movie that replays in their mind is not scenes from blissful, carefree days, but of painful moments they’ve carried into adulthood--moments that bookend their present hurts, creating an ever present veil of hopelessness.

Brokenness knows no seasons. I remember all too well, that first summer after losing my eighteen year old son, Thomas. Remembering the end of school-year parties he and my daughter, Kelly, attended, the feelings of anticipated fun, swimming, and vacation planning suddenly became vivid collections of a time I couldn’t have known then would become such a priceless treasure. I sit here on this day, realizing I have a choice. To remember…with sadness, or joy... and create the bookends of my present moments.

I’m glad I have my childhood memories, but I am also aware, because of the devastating pain of my own loss, how important it is to create new memories, capture moments (even this present writing moment), and keep my mind and heart focused on everyday blessings. None of us can change the past, but when we’ve suffered pain in our lives, we are given a sort of unspoken permission to live life to the fullest, with the same carefree abandon we may have felt as a child. There is a deep inner knowing that life has already dealt the hard stuff…that nothing can trump what we have already experienced (not that it can’t be repeated), that we are still here. That life is an open invitation from God—a divine door we are given to open each day, where we can we can go exploring the country roads of our choosing, take our hands off the handlebars, coast in the moment, and know that somehow (perhaps by the light of fireflies), we’ll always find our way back home.