Looking back is not always healthy, if you continue to keep your gaze behind you. To move on, live in the present, requires turning your head forward. But learning from the past is wise: aiding the rest of your living.
I’ve collected seven lessons from this last season, Summer. Today, I’m sharing them with you. And, yes, I am willing summer away, quickly!
7 Lessons
1. Heat and Humidity are my Nemesis.
This was a HOT one. I never welcome the prospects of summer weather. I melt, wilt, and want to crawl out of my skin. Whew…. this one was brutal! I surrender!
(If you’ve followed me long … you know this! I just want to assure in this changing world … it has NOT changed!)
2. Miracles Happen!
After years of infertility, miscarriages and infant loss, God blessed our family BIG with two new miracle babies. A lot of “unexplainable things” happened, culminating this summer with two healthy babies (and Mommas)!
Believing in miracles, sensing miracles and praying for miracles is important, but holding them in your arms and looking at them is mind-blowing and heart-exploding praiseworthy!
Recount your miracles, often! They are real and deserve your attention, over and over. It’s medicine for the soul and faith building.
Read More : Golden Moments, Two Days Later
3. Losing a Parent is completely Foreign.
I couldn’t practice for it. No one can define it for me! There is no “right” way to handle it. Even those close to me see it and handle it uniquely.
Even though my parents tried to prepare me, out of their experience, it’s incomprehensible until it happens!
Some days the waves of grief and loss are brief blips against the shore. Other days the waves are huge, relentless, knocking me over and swirling me in the surf. It’s unpredictable, shocking, and uncomfortable. Processing life without the ones I have known and loved my entire life is difficult and totally life changing.
Read More: Most Dreaded Day, Entering New Territory, Wisely Chosen
4. Covid is Very Trying and NOT Ending!
The longer it goes, the more burdensome it is! I want to let it go, move into fall and forget all about it! As the numbers climb at colleges and places where interactions have increased, I want to pay less attention. Then, the nurse in me remembers, there are actual health risks. And I seem to hear more and more people I know getting it.
Can it just be over? We all miss our former routines and rituals. Health risks now include mental health risks from isolation and life-change. It’s all A LOT!
Read More: Hope, Distracted, Honesty about Sanity
5. “Feeling Myself” has never seemed a problem until my life got restricted.
Suddenly, I recognize myself less. My days are abnormal. Like four months without a haircut … I didn’t even recognize the face in the mirror! Summer 2020 has revealed things I never wanted to know and still don’t, but was forced to.
6. Children and Grandchildren are my Reset!
A multitude of problems dissolve and my heart overflows in seconds. I never needed them more than 2020. God obviously knew and blessed me with two more! Praise Him!
(Let me clarify “children”… My children’s spouses, I consider my children. They are my “in-loves”! Not by birth but by love.)
7. I want to Move Forward!
As the summer changes to fall, I don’t recall ever wanting to move on quite this much! I’ve learned living “days on repeat under “Stay-at-Home orders” have me yearning for change. Leaving summer behind intensifies those feelings. I want to keep walking into what is next and quit allowing my heart and attitude to feel stuck. I’m going to figure out a way!
Have you collected any lessons this summer? Share with us!
The intense high pressure squeeze of living Covid plus other life events, has likely surfaced something about yourself to you, just like me!
It’s a healthy practice to consider what you’ve learned in each season. If I take the time to write them down, they stay with me longer and somehow, mean more.
Give it a try.
You might be surprised at what pops out of your brain and onto the paper!
Sayonara Summer,
Feel free to share with a friend(s).
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Elaine Stone 