The End of Summer Catch Up

Its been a whirlwind of a summer around here and I’m not gonna lie when I say I’m happy we’ve reached the end of this season. To put it bluntly, our summer sort of ran flat. We had a series of really unfortunate things happen that affected us negatively over the course of the last few months. A home deal fell through. A car engine failed. An armed robbery at my husband’s store. So you can understand why I might be ready to put this summer behind us, count our losses and sprint ahead into fall.

But despite the downfalls we experienced, something else happened. I saw how precious life really is, and the bigger picture stretched out very clearly before me. I decided I had wasted far too much time being angry about what didn’t work out. It was time to “quitcherbellyachin” as my mom would lovingly put it!

I began praying daily for peace because that was something I really desperately needed from God. I needed to know it was okay that it didn’t all work out according to my plan. To believe that what God had in store was far better than my own imagination could ever comprehend. And realize that there were still growth moments and takeaways from all the bad that had happened.

I also needed to take a short break away from the “online” as they say. I decided to give myself a mini blogcation for the rest of the summer. And I did a Facebook fast as well, refraining from any social media for a week. It did wonders for my soul to have a break from all the noise. I’m an introvert by nature, and I avoided diving into social media for a long time in my life because I felt it was too much of a negative distraction.

I will say, although I sometimes struggle with finding a happy medium in this industry, I still love blogging. I love the fact that I get to write and be creative and inspire people all in one fell swoop. It’s a challenging profession, but I’m up for the challenge.

Even though I wasn’t documenting every part of our summer here on the blog, we still had a lot of really good moments which I felt overshadowed the bad.

Our oldest daughter, Olivia, decided she wanted to get baptized.

She has been asking many questions about salvation and God for over a year now, so we knew she was ready. We had rented the movie Miracles from Heaven to watch as a family and afterwards all three of our kids had a ton of things they wanted to discuss. If you haven’t seen the movie, I won’t ruin it for you, but it’s a very powerful and emotional story regarding faith. There are parts that are hard to watch, but it opens up a lot of really good communication regarding why sometimes bad things happen to good people, and why our faith is so important to get us through those bad times.

I was a very proud momma when Olivia came to me the next day and told me she knew for sure that God was telling her it was time to be baptized. She was so excited to declare her faith in God! It was a very special moment for our family to witness.

I also had the privilege of throwing my sister a baby shower! I am very excited to become an auntie to another sweet little baby girl, who will be arriving soon in the fall. Baby showers are so much fun to plan. This one was especially fun because we went with a Woodland Animal theme. Don’t worry, I plan on sharing all the details on that party soon.

And to end our summer on a high note, we spent an entire week alone as a family at our cabin in the Northwoods.

I’ve written about our trips here in the past, and each one is near and dear to my heart. I love the fact that we can go here to escape the noise of this crazy world we live in, set aside all the demands our society puts on us and just unplug and recharge.

Our week was spent fishing, swimming, driving on dirt roads, sitting around the campfire, sleeping in late, watching the sun set over the lake and just being still.

It was a great way to unwind and reconnect after our hectic summer. And now, here we are, back into the swing of things with school starting up again, routines and a new season fast approaching. I’m looking forward to seeing what God has in store next!