Remembering This Summer

During college my summers were constructive and purposeful and memorable. My first summer after freshman year I went to a seven-week-long music festival in Western New York. The next summer I had an internship in DC, the next summer an internship in Hoboken, NJ. Each summer I was in a different place and with different people, accomplishing something unique and interesting for those few months in between school years.

In between my two years of grad school I was working hard on our cookbook with my family and planning my wedding at the same time. It was a beautiful summer filled with summer tomatoes and gorgeous recipes and lots of paper and ribbon and happiness.

Once there are no longer school years to divide and define, time starts blending together a little more, don't you think? It's not bad, just different. Other things make certain seasons or even months or weeks stick out in our memories. And I have a feeling that this summer, with its particular smells and moments and emotions, I think it'll be one that lasts and lasts.

I'll remember this summer for its joy. As we drove a short two and a half hours last weekend through the Blue Ridge Mountains and Northern Virginia's wine country up to a family reunion, I felt so much joy at finally being close to family. To be able to drive to see loved ones--amazing! This state, in all of its beauty, brings me joy and I'm proud to live in a place with history and old stone buildings that have been around for centuries and plaques on the side of the road that are fun to stop and read. Waking up in our sweet little house brings me joy. As long as my home is a place of beauty and peace and rest, a place where my family and friends feel safe and protected, a place filled with love and wholesomeness and honesty, then I've succeeded.

I'll remember this summer for our little screened porch. I catch myself sitting here and looking out at the trees with an involuntary smile on my lips. It's such a place of calm for me. I'll remember these summer mornings on the porch with a cup of tea and this blog and the birds and the streams of early sunlight peeking in. To have a place that is part of my home yet also a part of nature is magical.

I'll remember this summer for the ways God has proven faithful. These past few years were hard. I've sort of blocked out some of it but when I make myself remember how lonely some of those months were, it makes me exceedingly grateful for the here and now. The way forward was lit by faith alone.

As we grow deeper into our new lives and establish routines and build relationships, as it always happens, I'm sure a bit of the novelty and newness will wear off. Not that we'll take it for granted but there will be a settledness and a normalcy and a regularity to all of it. There's a beauty to this too.

But this time we're in right now, this summer of intensity and heart-swelling gratitude and deeply felt love of place and home and family and friends, I'll remember it for a very long time.